Hollywood leading man George Clooney once got an apology from actor Russell Crowe after the star said uncomplimentary things about him.

In a frank and wide-ranging interview in Esquire magazine's December issue, Clooney discussed his feelings about a number of issues and people - including fellow A-listers Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt and Crowe.

He said Crowe "really went after (him)" in GQ magazine article a few years ago. In the article, Crowe slammed Clooney and others for using their celebrity to do commercials, Clooney said.

"The truth is that [Russell Crowe] did send me a book of poems to apologize for insulting the [expletive] out of me, which he did. He picked a fight with me. He started it for no reason at all," the "Gravity" star told Esquire. "I think he said 'I was misquoted' and I was like, 'Yeah, yeah. Whatever.'"

This was the first time Clooney revealed the apology from Crowe.

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Clooney, 52, also took aim at actor Leonardo DiCaprio. In the interview, he discussed playing basketball against DiCaprio and some of DiCaprio's friends. Those friends, he said, bragged excessively about their skill and threatened to beat Clooney and his friends on the court. They didn't. In fact, they failed miserably.

"We're all like fifty years old, and we beat them three straight: 11-0, 11-0, 11-0. And the discrepancy between their game and how they talked about their game made me think of how important it is to have someone in your life to tell you what's what. I'm not sure if Leo has someone like that," he said.

In the same article, Clooney had nice things to say about "Ocean's Eleven" co-star Brad Pitt for Pitt's worked in the movie "World War Z."

He said he and Pitt met up in London after Pitt admitted that a series of re-shots for the film were tough.

"And I was like,'How you holding up?' And he took out a knife and stabbed it in the table and we drank a lot of vodka and he just said, 'This one's going to kill me, man,'" he said.

Clooney also shared his feelings about Twitter. He doesn't understand why celebrities would be on the microblogging site.

"Because you're going to be available to everybody … So one drunken night, you come home and you've had two too many drinks and you're watching TV and somebody pisses you off, and you go 'Ehhhhh' and fight back. "And you go to sleep, and you wake up in the morning and your career is over. Or you're an a**hole," he said. "Or all the things you might think in the quiet of your drunken evening are suddenly blasted around the entire world before you wake up. I mean, when you see, like, Ashton Kutcher coming out going, you know, 'Everybody leave Joe Paterno alone,' or whatever he said, you just go, 'Fifteen minutes longer and a thought process and probably you wouldn't have done that."