Too much dedication? George Clooney‘s method acting landed him in the hospital with pancreatitis after he lost nearly 28 pounds.
The actor, 59, was preparing for his role in The Midnight Sky, in which he portrays an astronomer who survives an apocalyptic event. Clooney told the Mirror on Wednesday, December 9, that during filming he was rushed to the hospital with stomach pains and learned he had pancreatitis.
“I think I was trying too hard to lose the weight quickly and probably wasn’t taking care of myself,” he explained.
Clooney — who is also the director of the Netflix movie — said he struggled with his recovery amid filming.
“It took a few weeks to get better and as a director, it’s not so easy because you need energy,” he said. “We were out on this glacier in Finland, which made it a lot harder work. But it certainly helped with the character.”
Clooney’s physical transformation for the film also included growing a beard. His wife, Amal Clooney, and their 3-year-old twins, Alexander and Ella, had differing opinions about his new facial hair.
“I grew a big ugly beard and my son loved it because he’d hide things in it, which I wouldn’t know about until I got to work and I’d be like, ‘Oh, there’s a popsicle stuck in my beard,’” he recalled. “But my wife and daughter were really happy when it came off because it was very hard to find a face underneath all that mess.”
The Descendants star began dating Amal, 42, in October 2013, and the pair got engaged six months later. In November, George recounted his proposal, noting that the human rights lawyer didn’t accept right away.
“We never talked about marriage when we were dating, and I asked her out of the blue,” he told CBS at the time. “[It] took her a long time to say yes. I was on my knee for, like, 20 minutes. I finally said, ‘Look, I’m gonna throw my hip out.’ We told that story to her parents, and they’re like, ‘There’s something wrong with his hip?'”
The couple tied the knot in Venice, Italy, in September 2014. Amal and George welcomed their twins three years later in June 2017.
