Hollywood star George Clooney has shared a nostalgic memory of his first kiss, which took place when he was just 11 years old in the back of a church in his hometown of Augusta, Kentucky.
He fondly recalled the moment, saying he and the girl were “hiding” from their friends who were waiting outside, playfully urging them to “Kiss her! Kiss her!” Clooney said, “(I had my first kiss) in the back of a church in my hometown of Augusta, Kentucky. I was 11. The relationship didn’t last — 11-year-olds move on pretty quickly,” he told W magazine.
In the interview, the actor reflected on a challenging time in his career when he feared it might end before it had really begun. He recounted an argument with an executive producer that left him questioning his future in Hollywood. Clooney explained, “About 10 years in, I got in an argument with an executive producer. I was the third or fourth banana on a TV show, and I had to leave. I thought that was the end of my career. I wasn’t in a position of power, but I wasn’t going to be spoken to the way that I was. I told him to knock it off. He yelled at me. I yelled back.”
He recounted the uncertainty of whether he was fired or if he quit, but emphasized that someone he had previously helped was pivotal in reviving his career. “Someone who I had helped out years earlier read that I’d been fired. He brought me in for an audition and gave me a pilot. That kept me in town,” Clooney shared.
Clooney expressed his pet peeves, citing “selfishness” and “lack of integrity” as qualities he dislikes the most in people. “Those are things that I dislike the most in mankind when I see it,” he stated.
In his upcoming film, he portrays a movie star named Jay Kelly, but he clarified that the character’s experiences are quite different from his own. “It’s funny, because I get why people go, ‘Isn’t this a little close to home?’ It didn’t feel that way to me because the guy has made such mistakes in his life. He’s isolated from his family, which I’m not. He has only friends that he pays, which I haven’t. I should maybe start paying my friends, but I haven’t yet done that. It didn’t feel like me, so it was easy to remove myself and just play a character,” Clooney explained.