George Clooney, Adam Sandler and Noah Baumbach know a thing or two about fame.
For one, it’s the subject of their new film, “Jay Kelly” (in theaters now and streaming Dec. 5 on Netflix). Clooney is the title character, a charming movie star who has stayed on Hollywood’s A-list for decades with the help of his devoted manager, Ron (Sandler). But as Jay’s youngest daughter prepares for college, the man on every billboard realizes he’s barely been there for her at all.
When he is invited to a festival tribute in Italy just as his daughter begins a vacation abroad, Jay follows her across Europe. Accompanied by Ron, facing his own crisis of confidence, Jay must confront the sacrifices he’s made by putting his career above all else.
“The universal theme of this isn’t about being a movie star,” Clooney said. “This is about pretty much everybody who works and the sacrifices you make to succeed.”
Still, when I met Clooney, Sandler and Baumbach last month at the Beverly Hills Hotel, each brought a unique perspective on fame and ambition.
Clooney was a working TV actor before “ER” catapulted him to global stardom and a high-flying film career, while “Saturday Night Live” helped establish Sandler as a comic movie star who was among the first big names to make the leap to streaming. Even Baumbach’s profile has risen substantially after directing the Oscar-winning “Marriage Story” and co-writing “Barbie” with his partner, Greta Gerwig.
For all three, “this is something that somewhere, at a very young age, we initiated, right?” Clooney said. “We had to have the temerity to think that you could write something and get it made and people would care. It’s madness that you think it’ll work — and if it does, you’re the luckiest.”
These are edited excerpts from our conversation.
What did you think fame would be like before you had it?
GEORGE CLOONEY I’d seen it from the point of view of my aunt [the singer Rosemary Clooney]. She was a big star in Hollywood in the ’50s, then pop music changed and she was out of business. She didn’t handle it well and lost about 30 years on drugs and booze being pretty angry at life.
So I got to see fame from the when-it-doesn’t-work-out side. It’s a great lesson because you understand how little it has to do with you and that there is no success at all without massive amounts of failure. I mean, Adam, how many auditions did you go on before you got a gig?
ADAM SANDLER Over and over, never got hired. But it didn’t ever get in my way.
CLOONEY It didn’t deter you.
SANDLER Because I was young and I just was like, “All right, keep going. Go, go, go, until it happens.”
CLOONEY For most people, that first “no” is devastating. The difference in what we do for a living is that the goods you’re selling is you — it’s not a set of encyclopedias. So when they say, “No thank you,” it’s personal. You have to be tough-skinned enough to say, “I’m going back in there.”
Adam, what do you remember about meeting George when he hosted “S.N.L.” in 1995?
SANDLER It was at the height of “ER,” and I went to a Knicks game with George. I remember feeling as invisible as I’ve ever felt. I thought I was becoming a star and I was like, “Oh, not a soul’s looking at me.” Every woman in the place was looking at him, every guy’s going, “Man, I wish I was that guy.”
CLOONEY That was really fun. We’ve always kept in touch but never found a project. Then Noah called.
Noah, you’ve become more famous in the last several years, too. Have you noticed that people treat you differently?
NOAH BAUMBACH Yeah, you notice that. Not everybody, though.
CLOONEY Never your kids.
BAUMBACH They don’t know any different.
Has your own experience of fame and success struck you in a way that made it into this movie?
BAUMBACH I thought about this in the middle of writing it, that a lot of my movies are about people who self-identify as a failure because the lack of success, to them, has equaled failure, which is not the case. But defining yourself by your success does the same thing: It’s just another way to not look at yourself as who you might actually be. That’s definitely the case for Jay.
George, you’ve said you’re glad you became successful later, in your 30s. But Adam, you were hired on “S.N.L.” only two years after college. What’s that experience of early fame like?
SANDLER I was excited for it. Back then, that’s all you wanted. I got on MTV when I was 18. I started walking around New York and having people say, “Hey, dude!” They didn’t always know my name.
CLOONEY When was the moment they actually knew your name?
SANDLER Probably the third season of “S.N.L.” When you start, you’re just one of the guys on the show. Then, all of a sudden, they say your name and you get excited.
CLOONEY When I moved to L.A., my cousin Miguel was best friends with Shaun Cassidy, just off “The Hardy Boys.” He’d go, “Come on, boys, let’s go to the mall and be famous.” And you’d go and everybody would cheer and scream. I was like, “Jesus Christ, this is overwhelming.”
SANDLER I was looking for that when I was young. I remember telling my parents somebody recognized me, and my father was like, “That made you feel good?” I’m like, “Yeah!”
What’s the down side to that?
SANDLER Sometimes you feel like you’re supposed to react a certain way in public because of who you’re perceived as being. So if I have a moment of not handling something right, it’s an extra-long look of, “What the hell happened? I didn’t think Adam would behave like that.”
Do strangers ever say, “Tell a joke, be funny”?
SANDLER I think every comedian gets that. [Chris] Farley was the best at that. Someone would get excited he was there, and they’d say some “be funny” kind of thing, and he’d be funny.
CLOONEY Comedians are not known for being the happiest people when they’re not onstage.
SANDLER That’s true. It’s not a guarantee you’ll get the best of us.
CLOONEY I played in the comedy basketball league at the Hollywood Y. Man, it was like hate all day, laugh all night.
How much do you let the public perception of you affect your actual personality? Jay is so committed to his persona that it sometimes seems to blur into his real life.
BAUMBACH The acting teacher [in the movie] says you’re acting twice if you are famous: Your job is to be an actor, and your other job is to act the part of the movie star.
CLOONEY The secret is to take everything with a grain of salt. I’ve always been surrounded by people who were around when I wasn’t successful and slept on their couches. It’s helpful to have that perspective. Those are the people laughing when somebody tells you how great you are.
BAUMBACH These two guys really do handle it with amazing generosity. I’ve been walking around New York with Adam and every person who walks by feels like they had a real moment with him, and we haven’t broken stride in our conversation.
CLOONEY There’s certain people — Adam, Bill Murray — where there is this expectation that something really great is going to happen when they see you. I’ve been around Adam when people are like, “Hey,” and he puts them at ease. Most people try to put up a defense layer.
The movie touches on how the life of a famous person can be somewhat circumscribed. Some celebrities, like Jay, stop going out in public altogether. But Adam, it sounds like you’ve figured out how to navigate that. You’re still willing to interact with people.
SANDLER I like jumping out there. Even when they say, “Do you want a car to take you to the premiere?” I always just say, “Let me drive myself.” Sometimes it gets too overwhelming, but that’s my instinct.
CLOONEY I’m not as good at getting out as you are. I have a tendency to go, “If I go out, that’s going to be an extra hour of talking to people.” Paul Newman actually talked about this to me.
When I first met him, he was at Warner Bros. doing “Message in a Bottle” and I was on “ER.” Newman was sitting outside smoking a cigarette, so I pulled up in the golf cart and was like, “Hey, just wanted to say hi.” He had no idea who I was, but everybody who came by on golf carts was like, “Hey, George.” “George!” So bit by bit, he figured out I was successful in the industry in some way.
Then he goes, “George, don’t let them keep you at home.” He meant very specifically that tendency to isolate because you’re trying to hold onto some privacy. My tendency at that moment was to stay in, and hearing Newman say that, it made sense immediately.
Jay is so committed to the maintenance of his A-list career that it almost seems he’s operating from a place of fear. We’ve seen actors get too cautious about losing their place in the pecking order.
CLOONEY But time always wins, ultimately. I did this series with Frank Langella and we were showing an old clip of him, and he looked at me and goes, “I was so beautiful.” He said you have to make peace with time, that you become more invisible as you get older.
Now, some guys were never going to be invisible — I was good friends with Gregory Peck, and if you walked in a room with him, everybody would stand up. But for most of us, you have to deal with the idea of aging.
BAUMBACH The movie is about time as well, and it was interesting for an American movie star to play his age because part of what we want from them is for them never to grow old. Cary Grant stopped acting because …
CLOONEY … he didn’t like how he looked kissing a girl.
BAUMBACH He didn’t think people wanted to see him that way. He wasn’t going to be “Cary Grant.” It was exciting for me to think about an American star like George to show something very revealing. It’s something Europeans did — Marcello Mastroianni aged and went for it — but not a lot of American actors have.
Jay watches a tribute reel that uses moments from George’s films. George, what kind of takeaway do you have when you watch one of those at a gala?
BAUMBACH His takeaway is in the movie, because that’s him watching the reel for the first time.
CLOONEY I didn’t know Noah was doing that, I was shocked. When I grab Adam’s hand, that was very real — we were both kind of tearing up. There’s that thing of, “I remember this was my big break, and this was such a failure, and this changed the trajectory of my career.” All of those things keep flooding by you.
BAUMBACH Watching yourself get older, too.
CLOONEY You don’t really have the perspective of aging that other people have of you. The only way that works is if you go away for a while and come back, but if you’re doing it constantly, slowly, it’s the frog in the water. It’s fascinating to sit in that room and feel it.
Part of it is, you’re shocked that it’s been 40 years. Laura Dern and I did a movie together 40 years ago [“Grizzly II: Revenge”] — she was 15! But there’s also a feeling of accomplishment. There’s some shame in some things you’ve done and some pride in some things you’ve done, which is good. It should be both.
Video camera operator: Gilles O’Kane
Kyle Buchanan is a pop culture reporter and also serves as The Projectionist, the awards season columnist for The Times.
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