George Clooney was 'really happy to let other people do the acting' in Suburbicon

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Around the time of their first collaboration, 2000’s O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Joel and Ethan Coen approached George Clooney about playing the role of an insurance investigator in Suburbicon. “I wanted to do it, but they never got it made,” Clooney says. When the Ocean’s Eleven star and his producing partner Grant Heslov were on the hunt for a new project after 2014’s The Monuments Men, Clooney remembered Suburbicon. “I called up Joel and Ethan and said, ‘Do you mind if Grant and I take a crack at it, and change it a little bit?’” Clooney says. “They said, ‘Have at it.’ ”

Matt Damon, Julianne Moore, and Noah Jupe (The Night Manager) play a ’50s-era family who are the victims of a home invasion, while Oscar Isaac portrays a suspicious investigator, the role once earmarked for Clooney. In fact, the Ocean’s Eleven star does not appear in the film, the first time he has not taken a role in a movie he has directed.

“It’s a real relief,” he says. “You can talk to Grant — he sits on the set when I’m shooting and I have to shoot scenes with myself. Usually, I’ll do one take and go, ‘That’s fine,’ and Grant will lean over and go, ‘Do another take, dude.’ I absolutely hate it. I just hate it. There’s something really screwy about being in a scene with someone — acting in it— and then telling that other actor how they should do it better, or do it differently. It’s sort of breaking a trust between two actors. It always made me feel uncomfortable. So, I was really happy to just be able to sit on the sidelines and let other people do the acting.”

Suburbicon will be released Oct. 27. Watch the film’s trailer above and see an exclusive image from the movie, below.