George Clooney recalls a tense on-set standoff that nearly lit his early career down in flames.
“After about 10 years, I got into an argument with an executive producer. I was the third or fourth banana on a TV show and I had to leave,” Clooney, 64, shared in an interview with In the magazine published on Tuesday, January 6. “I thought that was the end of my career.”
The actor explained that while he knew he wasn’t “in a position of power,” he wasn’t going to let it be “talked about the way I was,” so he “told him to stop. He called me out. I called him back. It’s still debatable whether I was fired or I quit.”
Fortunately, a face from his past showed up to repay a favor.
The man, the myth, the legend! George Clooney is a cut above the rest when it comes to Hollywood bigwigs, but his success didn’t happen overnight. The Oscar winner entered the entertainment industry in 1978 and was always focused on booking the next gig from the get-go. Luckily for him, this included small (…)
“Someone I’d helped years before read that I’d been fired. He took me to an audition and gave me a pilot,” he said. “That kept me in town.”
The dispute did not leave a permanent mark. Clooney had an illustrious television and film career, starring in five seasons of IS like Dr. Ross from 1994 to 1999 before winning two Oscars, five Golden Globes and countless other awards.
Despite decades of success in the industry, Clooney admitted he was sitting at home “wondering if I was ever going to work again” when the writer-director Noah Baumbach asked him to be him in his latest project, Jay Kelly.
Clooney said yes on the spot, before even reading the script. The film, which was released in November 2025, follows Clooney as the title character, an A-list movie star who is desperate to be reunited with his two daughters while struggling with his waning fame.
“It’s funny, because I understand why people say, ‘Isn’t that a little close to home?”’ Clooney joked about taking on the role. Still, the Oscar winner insists he’s nothing like his character.
“It didn’t feel that way to me because the guy has made those mistakes in his life,” he explained. “He’s isolated from his family, which I’m not. He only has friends he pays, which I don’t. Maybe I should start paying my friends, but I haven’t yet. It didn’t feel like me, so it was easy to pull back and play a character.”
Clooney is anything but reclusive. He and the woman love married in 2014, welcoming twins Alexander and Ella less than three years later. The family was recently granted French nationalityaccording to a naturalization decree via French newspaper Official Journal in December 2025, allowing his farm in the south of France to serve as his primary residence. They also have additional properties in England and Italy.
Clooney has continually been vocal about his desire to raise his children away from the “culture” of Hollywood, saying Esquire in October 2025 that France “doesn’t care about fame” and therefore gave her children more of a “fair shake at a normal life”.
Living on a farm also allows them to get their hands dirty. “For them, it’s like, they’re not on their iPads, you know? They’re eating with big guys and they have to bring their own plates,” she said. “They have a much better life.”
While talking to WClooney emphasized the importance to stay on the groundnoting that being “broken” is what taught him how to “get things done.” He recalled his early days selling menswear at Nadlers Men’s stores in Cincinnati, Ohio, when, unable to afford nice things, he made his own clothes.
“You had to have suits. I couldn’t afford to buy many, so I’d buy a cheaper, long suit, cut the bottom of the pants off and use the fabric to make ties, so I could go to work,” he said, listing his other unrecognized talents. “I can fix a car, I can sew, and if you drop me on a desert island… I was on a motorcycle trip with a friend, and he got hit by a car in the middle of nowhere in southern Italy. I went into the woods, got bamboo, and made him a leg splint with a rubber band. I’ve always been cheeky.”