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When Billy Crudup met George Clooney 15 years ago, the aura was real.
“It was pretty clear: He's George Clooney through and through,” Crudup says of his costar in the Netflix dramedy “Jay Kelly” (in select theaters now, streaming Dec. 5). “He truly understands the space that he occupies and has found a remarkable comfort in it.”
Flash back 40 years or so, though, and it's a much different Clooney. That guy is bombing auditions, including a reading for Francis Ford Coppola where Clooney’s agent told him the next day that “The Godfather” director thought he was drunk. Unlike his title character in “Jay Kelly,” who rides an accidental first audition into A-list status early in his career, Clooney didn’t find fame until he was 33 as the star of 1990s medical drama "ER."
“That's late in Hollywood life to get successful,” Clooney says. “I'd failed so many times. I'd done 13 pilots and seven television series before ‘ER,’ so my trajectory was very different.
“For me, it was a long journey. It was probably 100 auditions before I got my first paid job. So you get a lot of nos, but nos are helpful. You get tougher skin as you go.”
Played by Clooney, Jay Kelly is an aging movie legend who realizes in the twilight of his professional life that he’s prioritized work over loved ones. It’s extremely meta in the way it follows the actor’s existence – director Noah Baumbach even tailored the film to his resident star, making Jay from Clooney’s home state of Kentucky. Clooney also happens to be one of the few people who could pull the character off, Baumbach says. “George has this sort of timeless quality as a movie star. He could exist in any era of film history.”
Lively and self-deprecating, Clooney talks in depth with USA TODAY about his acting life vs. Jay Kelly’s and how he'll know when it’s time to ride off into the sunset.
This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.
How much do you recognize Jay’s life as your own, be it the way he deals with his entourage or asks for another take when he doesn’t need it?
George Clooney: Well, I'm a little different than that because when you have as limited an acting range as I have, you really hope they get it in the first couple of takes because there's not a whole lot of options. There's obviously some similarities. The early stuff [in the movie] is really fascinating, acting class and weaseling your way into auditions. I remember I was friends with a secretary at this small agency and I couldn't get in on auditions. You get the breakdown, which would tell you what the auditions were for, and I would then call and pretend to be my own agent and pitch myself to come in and read. If they called back, they would call the secretary at the agency and she would call me.
A piece of cheesecake being everywhere Jay goes is a hilarious running joke. Have you ever had a rider?
I remember I was in New York and the driver, he was pissed at me. I was like, “What's going on, dude?" He goes, “Look, George, I looked everywhere for Fuji apples. I can't find them anywhere.” Somebody had asked me at some point, do I want anything in my trailer to eat? And I said maybe some apples. They go, "Any kind in particular?" I was like, “I don't know, Fuji?” Because it was the only one I could think of. And all of a sudden it's in your rider. Everywhere you go, people are climbing mountains to find Fuji apples for you. And I had to go, "Take that out. You are crazy.”
A little bit of it happens accidentally with people trying to make everything nice. There's some actors that are literally “I only eat green M&M's” kind of bulls---. I grew up in Kentucky – we try to stay out of trailers. That's not the end all and be all, [me] in a double wide on the set.
You've inhabited so many different types of roles. What was it like playing an actor?
If you read the ["Jay Kelly"] script, you go, “This guy's a jerk.” All of his friends are people he pays, he kind of dismisses everybody. I thought about actors who do jerks really well. Danny DeVito would always be a jerk, but you liked him. Look at how many films Jack Nicholson was just a total jerk, like “Carnal Knowledge,” and you still rooted for him. I focused on trying to make sure that this guy was actively, earnestly believing that he's a good guy. If you think he's a jerk, you've lost the plot a little bit.
What kind of roles do you want now at 64? Is there a character actor in you waiting to jump out?
I've been trying to go the route [Paul] Newman did: “OK, well, I'm not kissing a girl anymore. That's getting a little old.” You just want to be challenged. I was terrified to do a play on Broadway ("Good Night, and Good Luck") this year. I had a lot of lines. I was worried about remembering my lines because you're 64. What was fun and exciting about it was how scared I was. And it's nice to be 64 years old and not know whether you can accomplish that in a profession that I've been successful at. I'm about to do a movie with Annette Bening – I'm worried about whether I can do it or not because she's such a wonderful actress.
So there's all of those things where challenging yourself is the exciting part still. I don't have to work, and that's a good place to be. I want to be able then to make sure that when I do it, it's for the right reasons.
Jay is coming to the point where he’s thinking of ending his career. Will you know when it’s time to walk away, or do you want to just keep going till the wheels fall off?
They're falling off already. Leg falls off every once in a while. My dad's [almost] 92 and he still writes. It’s important to stay active. I mean, you're a writer. I can't imagine you saying, “Well, now that I'm 70, maybe I shouldn't write anymore.” I do feel like because it's creative, you can stay involved and do what you want to do. There's going to be parts for "Grandpa gums bread" and I'll be the perfect guy for it. That's a good thing about the profession that I've chosen.
Having said that, when I turned 60, I had a conversation with my wife [Amal]. I said, “Look, I can still play basketball with the boys. I play with 25-year-old guys. I can still hang, I'm in shape. But in 25 years, I'm 85 years old. It doesn't matter how many granola bars you eat, that's a real number."
If you give up working, you lose your place in society. But we also have to make sure we are spending time doing things with our family, with the people we love more. Because Amal and I both tend to focus on trying to accomplish things. We've gotten much better at spending time with our kids. Listen, nobody gets it right. I don't get it right. You probably don't get it right. But we do the best we can. I'm not mad at my parents for missing things when I was a kid because they were putting food on the table.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: George Clooney has no interest in retirement
Reporting by Brian Truitt, USA TODAY / USA TODAY
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