Photo by Joe Scarnici/WireImage(NEW YORK) — Having a world-famous spouse can be intimidating — even if you’re George Clooney.
In talking about his upcoming film, Tomorrowland, Clooney spoke to Nightline about his new wife, Amal Clooney, a British international human rights attorney, and how even discussing each other’s day can turn into an interesting conversation.
“I was shooting [a movie] in New York … and I come home after wearing a bomb vest all day, and my wife has just come back from Strasbourg where she was in the middle of a trial over the Armenian genocide with the International Court of Appeals and asks me about my day, and I say, ‘Yeah, I had a fake bomb,’ and everything she does has actual consequence,” Clooney said.
Clooney and his wife captured the world’s attention last September when they arrived in Venice, Italy, for their star-studded wedding. Paparazzi and fans swarmed around the couple when they took a short motorboat ride along the canals from the Belmond Hotel Cipriani to the Aman Canal Grande Venice resort, where they celebrated their big day.
“We had not told anyone we were getting married but you have to post a thing in the paper,” Clooney said. “And we get in the boats and headed down the Cipriani, down the Grande Canal, and it was just thousands of people and it was crazy… and I thought, ‘This is what it’s going be like for the next three days.’”
Then Clooney suggested he and his new bride embrace the fervor, saying, “I was like, ‘Let’s just stand up,’ and we were waving at people.”
But Clooney said he was happy his wedding day was able to bring some happiness to others too.
“It was right in the middle of the Ebola scare and everything else, there was all this bad news, and people were in a good mood for that and it made it fun for all of us,” he said.
“It’s kind of like the theme of this film,” Clooney continued, referring to Tomorrowland.
Tomorrowland is a movie that defies categorization. Eagerly anticipated yet highly secretive, it tells the story of a parallel world, an image of an ideal future from a 1964 perspective, with hovering monorails and leather suits, not the future we’re in now with Twitter, which Clooney said he refuses to use.
“I think that it is the dumbest thing a famous actor could do, because there is nothing to gain from it,” Clooney said. “More people won’t go see your movie. If they did then Kim Kardashian would be the biggest movie star in the world. Honestly.”
“For me, the only thing that could happen is bad. Right? I have two drinks, I go home, and make a Mother Teresa joke, and I wake up and my career is over,” he joked.
In Tomorrowland, Clooney plays Frank Walker, a disillusioned dreamer in what director Brad Bird describes as a sci-fi action adventure road movie fable made by the Walt Disney Co., the parent company of ABC News. Clooney stars alongside 12-year-old Raffey Cassidy, who plays a kind of dark Disney character called Athena.
“I grew up on Walt Disney-produced films, when he was alive, and there was darkness, parts of Pinocchio that was scary…Captain Nemo is a haunted guy,” Bird said. “Disney was in love with storytelling, even his amusement park, that had a big impact, that’s what I called upon.”
Country music star Tim McGraw plays the father of Britt Robertson, an optimistic dreamer recruited to save Earth. Robertson told Nightline that she very much wanted this role.
“I sent in tapes, audition tapes. They brought me in for the casting director, then I auditioned for Brad and I went back in for the casting director, I went back in for Brad, he didn’t remember me at all,” Robertson said, laughing.
Tomorrowland hits theaters nationwide on Friday, May 22.
Follow @ABCNewsRadio
Copyright © 2015, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
