George Clooney Jokes About Being 64 & How Body ’Stops Working’ (Exclusive)

George Clooney chatted with “Extra” on the red carpet for “Jay Kelly” at AFI Fest 2025 in L.A.

He joked of promoting the movie with co-star Adam Sandler, “Stuck with Adam around. Everywhere I go, I got to have Adam in my hair.”

When we mentioned the award season buzz for Adam, he teased, "I made him put on a suit. I did. I was like, ‘You're going to put on a suit. I'm not going to call you Sandman. You're a grown-up. Be a grown-up.’”

In all seriousness, does George give Adam advice when it comes to awards? George insisted, "No, he's a grown-up. He knows what he's doing.”

He said of the actors spending time together shooting in Italy, “That area we were in, shooting, Pienza and Zibello and these places, the places I've been on my motorcycle for years and years. So, I have all these little farmhouse restaurants in the middle of nowhere that I took him to. We had a blast.”

George even threw Adam’s daughter a birthday party, “Oh, yeah. Well, we have the same birthday… Got to throw a party for her… we did a dual birthday and we all blew out candles. It was really fun.”

Clooney also reflected on the film’s  theme of balancing family and fame, noting that he found fame later in life and also had kids later.

 “I came to fame much later in life than most people do,” George explained. "And so I had failed a lot before then. And I think that's very helpful in adjusting to how you handle all of this.”

He welcomed his twins Alexander and Ella, now 8, with wife Amal when he was 56. George told us, “For the kids. Yeah. Well, you know,  I didn't have any plan on doing it and now I've got two,” joking, “Make plans!"

The other theme in the film is about self-discovery. So what has he discovered about himself? 

He insisted, “Not much at my age, 64, it's hard to discover many things about yourself except that things stop working. Like you wake up and an arm falls off and you're like, 'What the hell happened to my arm?’”

George later added, "Or I dyed my hair for a play and everybody thought I was going through a midlife crisis."

As for his character, he said, “What I loved about doing the film was that this isn't a guy that I relate to. You know, he's a pretty unhappy cat. So my goal was to try to just not make him a jerk, you know, and it was fun to try to find a way not to do that.”