George Clooney Reveals How His Aunt Rosemary Made Him Appreciate Fame in His 30s

George Clooney has no qualms about finding fame later in life — in part thanks to his aunt, the late Rosemary Clooney.

The 64-year-old actor opened up about family and fame during a Q&A following a Jay Kelly screening at the 63rd New York Film Festival on Tuesday, Sept. 30, when he was asked about achieving notoriety in his mid-30s.

“My aunt Rosemary was a very famous singer, at 19,” said George. “She was on the cover of Time magazine and then she did White Christmas as an actress, and boy, there was nothing she touched that couldn’t be great. And then rock and roll came in, and women in popular music were gone — at the time, when she started, nine of the top 10 singers were women. And then Elvis came along four years later, and there wasn’t a woman in the top 25.”

As George recalled, “She was on the road singing and came back and they were like, ‘What happened to you?’ And she’s like, ‘I’m done,’ at 24 years old,” he told the audience. “And she was done, and she handled it poorly. She got very drunk and did a lot of drugs and did everything stupid, and had to wait for about 40 years to have her career turn around again.”

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The “lesson” George learned from his aunt, who died in 2002 at age 74, “was to pay attention to how little this has to do with you — which you learn when you’re older, because when you’re young, you think you’re really smart.”

“And how much it is about circumstance and a beautiful script and director and extraordinary actors, and those kind of things,” added the two-time Academy Award winner.

Jay Kelly is the first movie by Marriage Story director Noah Baumbach since 2022’s White Noise, and stars George alongside Adam Sandler, Laura Dern and Billy Crudup.

The film “follows famous movie actor Jay Kelly (George) and his devoted manager Ron (Sandler, 59) as they embark on a whirlwind and unexpectedly profound journey through Europe,” per a synopsis. “Along the way, both men are forced to confront the choices they’ve made, the relationships with their loved ones, and the legacies they’ll leave behind.”

During the NYFF Q&A on Tuesday, George noted that his title character is “a guy who got famous much younger” than he himself did, “and was pampered in all the ways that you shouldn’t be.”

“I cut tobacco for a living for $3 an hour, so I got a different experience than he did,” George continued, of his own contrasting real-life background.

“We’ve all met people who got famous young. It’s a difficult thing to do, you know?” The actor also said, joking, “I think if things had worked out when I was 21 years old and suddenly was starring in films and things that … I would have been shooting crack into my forehead.”

“It’s not designed [for you] to say, jump and have people older than you say, ‘How high?’ You really need some time on your legs,” George added of the business.

Jay Kelly is in select theaters Nov. 14 and on Netflix Dec. 5.