When George Clooney met Julia Roberts

The stars of “A Ticket to Heaven” speak of over 20 years of friendship

Julia Roberts began the interview with a question: “Is George already causing problems?”

His friend and frequent co-star George Clooney preceded Julia in our video call, talking about Provence, France, a property he shares with his wife, Amal. But the room he sat in was filled with so much sunlight that Clooney could barely be glimpsed through all the reflections, and when Roberts joined us, he was unnecessarily drawing the patterned shutters.

“Are you trying to show all your inner light with this glow?” Julia said.

Clooney looked at his thumbnail on Zoom. “You have these good lenses,” he joked.

“I have a 25-year-old computer!” she replied.

This provocative way is how Julia and Clooney prefer to communicate: “It’s our natural rhythm of cheerful noise,” she said. Their relationship has sustained a great collaboration that spans multiple films, from Eleven men and a secret in 2001 to the most recent, the romantic comedy Ticket to heaven, starring in theaters and presenting them as a former warring couple who team up to prevent their daughter (Kaitlyn Dever) from surprisingly marrying a seaweed farmer (Maxime Bouttier) they met on a graduation trip to Bali. As her divorced parents bond, her former spark is rekindled; at the end of the film, they move towards something more loving.

When I spoke to Julia and Clooney in late August, there was no light coming in from Roberts’ bay windows – it was only 6 am in San Francisco, where Roberts and her husband, Danny Moder, live with their three teenage children. . Roberts had requested an early start so that she could send the kids to school after the interview, and she noticed she got up early: for a sunrise scene in Ticket to heavenshe was supposed to arrive at 3 in the morning, the first time she had performed in her career.

“I was supposed to arrive at 1am,” Clooney joked, “because of the work they do on my face in advance.”

“All those ribbons and that pasta,” he said, letting out his famous laugh.

Edited excerpts from our conversation follow.

when you read Ticket to heavenDid each of you have the other in mind?

George Clooney: They sent me the script and it was clearly written for Julia and me. In fact, the characters’ names were originally Georgia and Julian. I haven’t done a romantic comedy since A special day (1996) – I wasn’t as successful as Julia in this field – but I read it and thought, “Well, if Jules is involved, I think it might be fun.”

Giulia Roberts: Somehow it only made sense to George, only based on our chemistry. We have a friendship that people know and we are getting closer as a divorced couple. Half of America probably thinks we’re divorced, so we have this for ourselves.

Clooney: We had to get a divorce because I’m married now, so it would be a shame. I’m just saying.

Giulia: Also, George and I feel the happy responsibility of wanting to do a comedy together, to give people a vacation from life after the world has gone through a very difficult time. It’s like when you walk on the sidewalk and it’s cold and you come to that beautiful patch of sunshine that brushes your back and you say, “Oh yeah. That’s exactly what I needed to hear.”

Is it true that you two didn’t know each other before “Eleven Men and a Secret”?

Giulia: The funny thing about meeting George was that people in the press already considered us friends. I read that I went to a party at George’s house and thought, “Well, I have to meet this guy at some point because he looks good.”

Clooney: I’m fun, dude!

Giulia: There is an alchemy between us that you can hear from afar, I think.

Clooney: I’ve always been attracted to Julia for a variety of reasons. One is that she has always been a real movie star, but she doesn’t take herself seriously, and that makes a lot of difference in life because we spend a lot of time together. She is also a very talented actress. She works hard, but you never see her sweat, and that’s the quality I appreciate most about my favorite actors, like Spencer Tracy.

Julia, you are an executive producer on the film alongside George and obviously have a lot of experience in romantic comedies. What point of view do you have as a veteran of the genre?

Giulia: This is a genre that I love to participate in and watch, and I think it’s difficult to interpret. There is very simple math to this, but how do you make it special? How do you keep people interested when you can predict what will happen?

Did Hollywood have trouble answering these questions? There are far fewer romantic comedies than before, and you said it Ticket to heaven it was the first romantic comedy script since then A place called Notting Hill (1999) and My best friend’s Wedding (1997) that really attracted you.

Giulia: I don’t think we enjoyed the rich crop of romantic comedies we had at the time. You don’t see all the effort and strings of the puppets because it’s funny and sweet and people laugh, kiss and are mischievous. Also, I think it’s different to read these scripts at 54. I can’t read a story like My best friend’s Weddingwhere I’m falling out of a chair and all that stuff because …

Clooney: You would break your hip.

Julia: I’d break my hip! Ah, Giorgio. But it was nice to read something that was age appropriate, where the jokes made sense, and I enjoyed and understood what these people were going through. This is what people want to see, your connection with a job. They want to see the space you have for this in your heart, not just “Oh, do something fun because we love it.”

But the fun is still important. There is a scene inside Ticket to heaven where your characters dance drunk to the rhythm of the music I’ll make you sweat (everybody’s dancing now), embarrassing her daughter and her friends. Was this choreographed for maximum humiliation or did you just improvise?

Giulia: People always want to choreograph, but you can’t try the steps for that. You just have to open up and let the magic happen.

Clooney: I remember at the beginning of my career I had to do a kissing scene with this girl and the director said, “It’s not like that.” And I was like, “Dude, this is my move! This is what I do in real life!” It kind of went like that here, because everyone had plans for how we were supposed to dance, and so we thought, “Well, actually, we have some really bad dance moves in real life.” Julia and I have already done all these moves, this is the craziest part.

Giulia: Oh, all over the world.

Clooney: And Kaitlyn and Max were really horrified, weren’t they?

Giulia: He was hysterical, they were speechless. If Danny and I did it in front of our kids, they’d say, “I want to go into a hole, I want to get out of here.” / Translation by Lívia Bueloni Gonçalves

Source: Terra

Emily

Emily Jhon is a product and service reviewer at Gossipify, known for her honest evaluations and thorough analysis. With a background in marketing and consumer research, she offers valuable insights to readers. She has been writing for Gossipify for several years and has a degree in Marketing and Consumer Research from the University of Oxford.