Have you guys watched Jay Kelly on Netflix yet? I’m avoiding it until someone convinces me that it’s actually an awards-contender. While George Clooney has been nominated for a Golden Globe for the film, the streets are saying the film sucks and George is the worst part. I’ve been on an anti-Clooney tear since 2024, but I will acknowledge that back in the day, Clooney was a decent leading man and romantic lead. He was better at the stuff like Ocean’s Eleven and the kinds of projects which don’t require much heavy lifting from him. Well, Clooney recently chatted with Richard Eden at the Mail about the next phase of his career. That phase? Post-romantic lead.

George Clooney has admitted his Hollywood heartthrob days are over and following discussions with wife Amal will no longer be ‘kissing girls’ on screen. The actor, 64, who has starred in a string romcoms throughout his career smooching the likes Julia Roberts and Catherine Zeta-Jones, said his age now ruled out any further such roles.

He told Daily Mail’s Richard Eden how he planned to navigate the switch following in the footsteps of a fellow acting icon: ‘I’ve been trying to go the route Paul Newman did: “OK, well, I’m not kissing a girl any more”‘.

George and Amal have been married since 2014 and are parents to eight-year-old twins Ella and Alexander. On accepting the passage of time, he added: ‘When I turned 60, I had a conversation with my wife. I said, “Look, I can still play basketball with the boys. I play with 25-year-old guys. I can still hang, I’m in shape. But in 25 years, I’m 85 years old. It doesn’t matter how many granola bars you eat, that’s a real number.”’

George was previously left horrified when a director criticised his kissing skills after using his ‘real-life moves’ for the scene. The star recalled said the mortifying moment from early in his career as he filmed an intimate scene with a co-star and he got told off by the director over his moves.

‘I remember early on in my career, I had to do a kissing scene with this girl and the director goes, “Not like that.” And I was like, “Dude, that’s my move! That’s what I do in real life!”‘ he told The New York Times.

[From The Daily Mail]

I mean… it’s not like those roles exist for any over-60 actor anymore. There are only a handful of romances made these days, and usually, those roles are for actors in their 20s or 30s. Maybe you’ll get an odd romance script for someone in their 40s. It feels like George always saw himself as having a Cary Grant-esque career, because Cary Grant played a romantic lead well into his 60s (and did it well, I might add – one of the greatest romantic lead actors in the history of film). But the scripts aren’t there. And in Clooney’s case, the talent isn’t there either. He can’t pull it off at this point for like ten different reasons.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.