Preparing for a rough ride, extreme weather, and excessive weight loss. These three factors took their toll on actor George Clooney as he directed and starred in the film. Midnight sky, his latest cinematic adventure to premiere on Netflix on December 23. And it was of such significance that it forced him to be admitted to a hospital, as he himself has now told in an interview with a UK newspaper.
Terrible abdominal pain plagued the 59-year-old actor just four days before going both in front of and behind the cameras to start filming the movie, which he himself considers his biggest project. The pain turned out to be pancreatitis, an inflammation of the pancreas that can become life-threatening, and he had to go to the emergency room and spend several days in the hospital
In Midnight sky, Clooney plays Augustine Lofthouse, a scientist who survives a global catastrophe in the Arctic. To get into the role, he had to lose a lot of weight, around 13 kilos. Something that he believes may have contributed to the disease. “I think I spent trying to lose weight too quickly and I did not take care of myself,” he has now reported in an interview with the newspaper The Mirror.
“It took me a few weeks to recover, and as a director it was not easy, because you need to have energy,” he explains now, about to release the film. “We were on a glacier in Finland, which made all the work much more difficult. But it clearly helped with the character. This is bigger than anything I have done so far and it was extremely difficult to carry out. But hey, you know, it was fun, “he says now, after the worst.
Already on a more fun plane, Clooney says that among the sacrifices physical that his character had to face was not only losing weight, but also growing a beard, something that the women of his family did not particularly like. “I grew a really ugly big beard and my son loved it because he tried to hide things in my beard that I wouldn’t find out about until I went to work and it was like, ‘Come on, there’s a lollipop hidden in my beard.’ But my wife and daughter didn’t like it very much, because it was hard to find my face under all that mess, “he laughs, referring to his wife, lawyer Amal Clooney, and the twins they have in common, three years old and medium.
The actor has conducted the interview from Los Angeles, California, where he confined himself with his family 10 months ago to pass the pandemic and where he also intends to spend the Christmas holidays. “We haven’t moved since February,” he explains. They chose the city of Los Angeles because “it’s easy, it doesn’t rain or snow, it’s easier to go out for a walk. Those drug companies have done an incredible job, we’ve almost done it, so it’d be stupid to screw it up. We stay and spend the holidays here, ”he says.
The interpreter affirms that in a pandemic he has done everything he did when he was “a single broke”: “I have done my own laundry, washed the dishes and mopped the floors, I have painted my entire house inside and out. It’s just the four of us and I do it all again ”. For him, his family has become his absolute priority and what makes him happy, he explains, after being married to the lawyer for six years. “There is nothing more fun than sitting in the morning with the children, singing in Italian and making them breakfast. I chose well when I chose Amal. The two of us, dining together every night, we never ran out of conversation. We could not be happier with our lives and we could not feel more fortunate. “
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