George Clooney Reflects on Stardom in New Film

“She got her fame at 16, and it was big. She was on a cover of Time magazine. And she believed all the stuff when they tell you how great you are … Then the business changed and she wasn’t prepared for that. If you believe the first part, you gotta believe the second part.”

“There’s a line in this film, 'all my memories are movies.' That’s not true with me. But my memories of movies are not the scenes or the movie. It’s the experience.”

“I did sit in the room and watch my agent make a lot of calls. And, by the way, he made so many while texting at the same time, I’m like, is he concentrating at all on any of these? I did see the passion and the warmth. And when he would stop texting and go straight to the phone, I knew it was business.”

“He said, 'all the advice I can give you is meet three great filmmakers who wanna work with you.' He kept saying that: Worry about the filmmakers. You don’t just want to be a star.”

“It’s so lush in its appreciation for the sort of carnival life of actors and the proximity to some kind of gilded, glorious life that’s always tantalizingly close. We use movie stars as some kind of analogy about what it means to be successful and have a happy life, when in fact, that’s smoke and mirrors. And if you’re too busy looking out for that, you’re gonna miss the life that you have.”

“There’s something inherently confusing about spending your life pretending to be other people. There’s this push and pull constantly because you’re interested in reality and so you want to help tell stories about it. But it’s much easier to bear life in this kind of contained way.”

“They’ve been growing with us. It’s hopefully an homage to everything they’ve taught us by the way they’ve cared for us all these years.”

“When George came, I just told him 'I’m gonna show you this reel and I just want you to watch it.' A lot of actors wouldn’t necessarily be open to giving up that kind of control. But what I find beautiful about that sequence is that something is really happening, he’s really having this experience watching his life before him. And he’s having a real experience.”