George Clooney once turned down $35 million for a single day’s work: ‘It’s not worth it’

Imagine being offered millions of dollars for a single day’s work. Well, that was George Clooney’s reality – but he turned it down.

The award-winning actor was sent a jaw-dropping offer of $35 million to feature in an airline commercial, but after a conversation with his wife, human rights lawyer Amal, he said it wasn’t “worth it”.

“It was (associated with) a country that, although it’s an ally, is questionable at times, and so I thought ‘Well, if it takes a minute’s sleep away from me, it’s not worth it,’” he explained to The Guardian.

Clooney, 60, married Amal in 2014 in a star-studded ceremony in Venice. The pair have two children together – twins Ella and Alexander, who were born in June 2017.

The Ocean’s Eleven actor opened up about childcare, telling the news outlet they only have a nanny “four days a week”, as “it’s so important to Amal (to be involved).”

But, during lockdown, it was just the two of them “for a full year.”

“I felt like my mother in 1964 – doing dishes and six loads of laundry a day,” he added.

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Speaking about his recently directed film, The Tender Bar, released in October at the London Film Festival, Clooney said he enjoyed taking a break from the “pretty dark” movies he tends to work on.

“Most of the films I do are pretty dark and this one felt light, and it felt like the world was pretty dark, so I wanted to work on something that was a little lighter, you know,” he said.

The coming-of-age film is set in New York and based on a book of the same name by JR Moehringer, which tells the story of a boy who seeks father figures at a bar run by his uncle. It stars Ben Affleck as bar owner Charlie, with Tye Sheridan playing his nephew J.R.

The Tender Bar will hit UK cinemas on 17 December.