There are still some things money can’t buy, apparently. George Clooney, for one.
In an interview with the Guardian, the Oscar-winning actor and producer has disclosed that he once turned down $35M for a day’s work.
Clooney explained: “I was offered $35M for one day’s work for an airline commercial, but I talked to Amal [Clooney, the human rights lawyer he married in 2014] about it and we decided it’s not worth it. It was [associated with] a country that, although it’s an ally, is questionable at times, and so I thought: ‘Well, if it takes a minute’s sleep away from me, it’s not worth it.’”
The article outlines that Clooney’s extracurricular work alone means he’ll never go hungry. The Guardian notes that his work for Nespresso has netted him $40M and his tequila company Casamigos was sold four years ago for a potential $1BN.
In the wide-ranging interview, done ahead of the UK release of Tender Bar, which he directed and produced, Clooney was asked why he has slowed down on the acting front since he got married.
“In general, there just aren’t that many great parts – and, look, I don’t have to act. My wife and I had this conversation when I turned 60 this summer. I said: ‘I can still bounce around pretty good, and we both love what we do. But we gotta make sure we don’t book ourselves silly.’ So, part of it is just us making sure we live our lives.”
That said, the Hollywood icon noted that he is about to go to Australia to join Julia Roberts, Kaitlyn Dever and Billie Lourd in rom-com Ticket To Paradise, which is underway. He also revealed that he will be in the UK next summer to a make a film with Brad Pitt. Clooney didn’t say which movie, but this could potentially be the Jon Watts-directed thriller for Apple about two lone-wolf fixers assigned to the same job.
Clooney also touched on his brushes with politics, saying he always “liked a good fight”: “I would be so ashamed if, for instance, in this last Trump regime, I hadn’t been on the record of being against some of the horrible things he’d done. My kids would be like: ‘So, they were putting kids in cages and you didn’t say anything?’ The blowback is nowhere near as bad as the shame I’d feel.”
The actor also reiterated his admiration for two Hollywood legends: “The two actors who were personally friends and also had the most influence on me were Paul Newman and Gregory Peck, both of whom were men I greatly admired for who they were and how they were on screen. They were proper old-fashioned movie stars and they mixed it up in [politics]. So it was really fun to be friends with them and copy some of the things they did.”
