George Clooney nearly died three years ago. Today he talks about the accident, the benefits of his late success, and how much the Harvey-Weinstein trial changed the film industry.
Three years ago, George Clooney had a motorcycle accident that nearly killed him. “I’ve been waiting for my switch to be thrown,” he said in an interview about fame, old age and mortality with the Sunday Times. When he was lying on the street in Sardinia, he was surrounded by people and filmed on his cell phone. “When you lie down and think this is the last minute of your life, you realize that for some people you are just a conversation on their Facebook page. I’m a positive person, but that made me realize that you’re really only here for their entertainment. “
The benefit of late fame
When fame in the guise of Dr. Doug Ross stepped into his life in the Emergency Room, Clooney had grappled with bad movies and failures for years. That was his luck, as he thinks today. “When you’re a young actor, you run toward success. And the moment you get there, you can get burned. I’m lucky that I didn’t become famous until I was 33 and not when I was 23. I might have Taken crack when I’d been 23 and then got money and success. “
One is never prepared for this kind of notoriety. At the height of his fame, women journalists might propose marriage to Clooney at the press conference instead of asking him questions about his latest film. It was a crazy time. Clooney stayed on the ground. “You have to have failed a lot. When that happened, you don’t trust it. Every day I think, ‘If everything goes to hell, I still have a few houses, I could sell one.’ That’s my mentality. You learn everything from failure – you learn nothing from success. “
George Clooney on Harvey-Weinstein
Due to the late success, Clooney was also fortunate enough to have only starred in a few really bad films later when he was famous. “Batman & Robin was a monumental disaster and I was bad at it, but that taught me.” From then on he only followed the scripts. This was followed by “Three Kings”, “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” And “Out of Sight” – with that the heartthrob and series doctor had established himself as a serious actor.
In the interview, Clooney also mentions Harvey Weinstein, whom Clooney knew and with whom he worked. “A lot has changed,” says the actor about the post-Weinstein era. “You can’t get away with being an asshole anymore – you’d get flogged.” Now there is sometimes an overreaction, but that will subside. The important thing is: “I can no longer imagine a producer holding a casting with a young girl in his hotel room alone today. So it’s moving in the right direction.”
The time that remains
The pandemic was a special experience for the superstar. He spent a year with just his wife, Amal, and their four-year-old twins. “I felt like my mother in 1964, doing three loads of laundry a day. But we were all together – and I didn’t experience that with my parents.” He turned 60 in May. “To be 60 years old is a shock,” he told the paper. “But either that or death.”
He was healthy, played basketball. In 20 years he will be 80. He said to his wife Amal that the next 20 years are sacred. “Professionally, Clooney has been completely independent since selling a tequila brand that he had built with his fame. One billion dollars he gets for his shares and wants to produce fewer films in the future, also so that he can spend more time with the children.
Division and reconciliation
The next film, “The Tender Bar”, will hit the cinemas in December and will be shown on Amazon in January. The strip is based on US journalist JR Moehringer’s memories of his youth in his uncle’s bar. Ben Affleck plays the uncle, and it’s a warm-hearted film about the importance of family in the Nixon years. A split time back then too. But today the social media would fuel the contradictions of society, Clooney regrets. “In the past few years in the US there have been two different tribes who hate each other. And I was mad too. But we still pay our bills and go to work – we just have to figure out how to get along.”
His next film is a romantic comedy set on a tropical island. The co-star is Julia Roberts. That should reconcile both political camps in the cinema.
Source From: Stern
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