‘In the South of France With George and Brad’

I really dug this interview by Zach Baron for GQ with George Clooney and Brad Pitt, who are co-stars in the upcoming Apple feature film Wolfs:

Clooney: We’re lucky too. We’re in a profession that doesn’t force you into retirement.

Baron: Well, there’s two sides of that coin, right? There is that cliché for actors of: All of a sudden the phone stops ringing.

Clooney: Okay, but there’s two ways of doing this, right? The phone stops ringing if your decision is that you want to continue to be the character that you were when you were 35, and you want a softer lens. But if you’re willing to, say, move down the call sheet a little bit and do interesting character work, then you can kind of — you have to make peace with the idea that you’re going to die! I will walk up to people and they’ll be like, “Oh, you’re older than I thought.” And I’m like, “I’m 63, you dumb shit!” It’s just: That’s life. And so as long as you can make peace with the idea of change, then it’s okay. The hard part is, and I know a lot of actors who do this — and you do too — who don’t let that go and try desperately to hold onto it.

★ Monday, 2 September 2024