George Clooney got a taste of his own practical joking on the set of OCEAN'S TWELVE in Italy when pal Brad Pitt turned the movie star into a diva with a simple memo.

Clooney, who is famous for pulling pranks on his co-stars, spent two weeks on the set scratching his head and trying to figure out why his crew insisted on calling him by his character's name in the film, Danny Ocean.

Co-star Matt Damon explains, "Brad put a memo out in Italian. He had somebody translate it into Italian for the entire Italian crew and, when we got there, attached to the call sheet was instructions of how to interact with George Clooney.

"Brad wrote, 'You can only refer to him as Mr Ocean or Danny Ocean or Danny. It was this long list and this went on for like two-and-a-half weeks.

"People were going, 'Hello Mr Ocean...' and finally he caught on when some guy said, 'OK Danny, whatever you want.'

"So George walked right up to the first AD (assistant director) GREG JACOBS and said, 'Did you know about this?' and Greg just looked and he started to see the next few years of his life play out, and he turned to George and said, 'Please don't hurt my children.'"

14/07/2004 02:27