‘I just thought basically if I get hit by a bus, they’re all in the will. So why the fuck am I waiting to get hit by a bus?’
It’s been years since news about Ocean’s trilogy star George Clooney’s surprise gift of $1 million in cash to 14 of his closest friends but now we get to know the exciting details.
Recall in 2017, one of the actor’s longtime pals, Rande Gerber, told MSNBC that Clooney had invited his closest friends over for dinner one night and pulled off a surprise of a lifetime gifting them each with a suitcase full of cash.
Now in a tell-all interview with GQ, the high profile actor spilled his side. According to the Hollywood Megastar, it happened in September 2013, right before his film “Gravity” premiered which wound up being a “very good deal”, Clooney, revealed because he was paid based on percentages of box-office revenue. At the time, although the actor had already met his future wife, Amal Alamuddin, but the two weren’t dating and he wasn’t having any financial obligations and didn’t foresee a family ahead either, so he decided to pull off the amazing surprise.
“And I thought, what I do have are these guys who’ve all, over a period of 35 years, helped me in one way or another,” Clooney told GQ.
“I’ve slept on their couches when I was broke. They loaned me money when I was broke. They helped me when I needed help over the years. And I’ve helped them over the years. We’re all good friends. And I thought, you know, without them I don’t have any of this. And we’re all really close, and I just thought basically if I get hit by a bus, they’re all in the will. So why the fuck am I waiting to get hit by a bus?”
How did Clooney manage to gift them in cold cash? according to the star he hopped in a beat-up van that said “Florist” on it, he drove his van to an undisclosed location in downtown Los Angeles, drove it into an elevator, took the van down to a vault and filled it with money.
No one knew but his assistant, “and a couple of security guys that were shitting themselves. And we brought it up, and I bought 14 Tumi bags, and then I packed in a million bucks, cash, which isn’t as much as you think it is, weight-wise, into these Tumi bags.”
The following day, he invited all his friends over.
“I just held up a map and I just pointed to all the places I got to go in the world and all the things I’ve gotten to see because of them. And I said, ‘How do you repay people like that?’ And I said, ‘Oh, well: How about a million bucks?’ And the fun part about it was: That was the 27th, the 28th of September. A year later, on the 27th of September, just by happenstance, was the day I got married.”
So sweet!
