George Clooney Admits He Was ‘a Little Disturbed’ When Confronted with Footage from His Old Movies (Exclusive)

NEED TO KNOW

• George Clooney plays a movie star in new movie Jay Kelly

• Filming its final scene, Clooney was shown footage from his own past projects, which he says he was not told about beforehand

• “I was really surprised by that — and a little disturbed,” quips the actor-filmmaker to PEOPLE

George Clooney got a blast from the past watching his new movie.

In Jay Kelly (in theaters now and on Netflix Dec. 5), the Oscar winner, 64, plays a famous movie star not unlike himself. Speaking to PEOPLE at the Noah Baumbach movie’s Nov. 11 Los Angeles premiere, it’s clear some of the parallels with his real life were less than comfortable.

The final scene of Jay Kelly — light spoilers follow — shows Clooney’s Jay and his manager (played by Adam Sandler) taking in a highlights reel of Jay’s past cinema work at a lifetime achievement ceremony. Baumbach used real footage from the actor’s many past screen projects, a move Clooney says he “didn’t know they were going to do.”

Ron Tom/NBCU Photo Bank

The Facts of Life

“The first time he shot, it was the first time he showed it to me,” explains Clooney. “The first take is in the movie.”

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When he’s seen grabbing hold of Sandler’s hand, Clooney confirms, it’s barely acting. “I was really surprised by that — and a little disturbed,” he admits.

MICHAEL TRAN/AFP via Getty

George Clooney

“It’s hard,” he quips. “You have to really fortify yourself for seeing 40 years of aging on screen. It’s not so easy with a bad mullet. It’s not great.”

It was around the time he booked his breakout role in the 1980s sitcom The Facts of Life that Clooney sported a thick, dark mullet, as he recently showed on Jimmy Kimmel Live!. “Look at that hair! That’s a mullet, dude,” he said of a snap of him from that era.

Jay Kelly, costarring Laura Dern, Greta Gerwig, Billy Crudup, Riley Keough, Baumbach’s co-writer Emily Mortimer and more, is in theaters now and on Netflix Dec. 5.

Read the original article on People