I read a quote from George Clooney that was sourced to a Newsweek interview in which he completely ripped on Jennifer Aniston’s prolonged non-relationship with Vince Vaughn. It sounded really harsh to me and I assumed it was a fake quote that was attributed to a source to make it seem real.

It began on the set of a film called “the break-up,” so let’s face it: the Vince Vaughn-Jennifer Aniston romance was doomed. It met its official, flack-certified demise last week, but it sounded over many times before.

The interview is easy to find on Newsweek’s website, and it’s basically a fluff piece in which Clooney talks about the frequent rumors that stars are getting married on his estate and reveals that his beauty routine consists of washing his face with plain soap and cutting his own hair. There’s nothing about Jennifer Aniston in the current article.

When I searched on some phrases from the quote I thought was fake, that same article came up in the Google cache with the statements about Aniston. The article was titled differently before the quote was removed, and was called “Newsmakers: George Clooney, Jennifer Aniston.” Now it’s just called “Newsmakers: George Clooney.”

At first I thought “Holy crap, George Clooney really hates Jennifer Aniston and tried to cover it up,” but it just looks like Newsweek had some trouble translating a print page to the web. That quote is not from Clooney at all, it’s a brief entertainment blurb that was tacked onto the end of the Clooney Q&A. The bold part is not worded like a question, and given the old title “Newsmakers: George Clooney, Jennifer Aniston,” it seems like it’s just another part of this entertainment section and was probably designed in the magazine with an inset box or put off to the side so you can tell it’s not part of the Clooney interview.

Here’s the cached Google version. There’s also a screenshot of it, because I’m ocd that way.
Here’s the actual version on Newsweek’s website, without that bit about Aniston.

You may read that quote around the web, and Clooney just didn’t say it. (Of course I was hoping Clooney really did say this, and had his people request that it be deleted from the article, but unfortunately that doesn’t seem to be the case.)