George Clooney on Sept. 1, 2024. Photo:
Franco Origlia/Getty
George Clooney is facing a challenge in his Broadway debut: smoking a significant amount of prop cigarettes on stage.
When Clooney, 63, appeared on the Sunday, March 23 episode of 60 Minutes to discuss his role as mid-20th century broadcast journalist Edward R. Murrow in new play Good Night, and Good Luck, the two-time Oscar winner cited having to smoke so many prop cigarettes as a major hurdle for him to overcome in rehearsals, noting that many of his family members have died of lung cancer over the years.
“The hardest part for me is smoking,” he said. “He smokes a lot. And we smoke a lot in the play. Everybody smokes in the play, so the place is covered in smoke. And smoking in our family’s a big, you know, problem.”
“We grew up in Kentucky. A lotta tobacco farmers,” Clooney added. “And almost all of my family members died of lung cancer. My father’s sister, Rosemary, died of it. She was a wonderful singer — died of it. And my dad’s 91 because he didn’t smoke. So smoking has always been- it’s a hard thing to do.”
George Clooney in Good Night, and Good Luck. EMILIO MADRID
Clooney previously directed a film version of Good Night, and Good Luck in 2005 that starred David Strathairn as Murrow, who died in 1965 at 57. In that movie, Clooney portrayed Murrow’s news producer Fred W. Friendly. While speaking with The New York Times in February about adapting the film to a stage production, Clooney noted that he planned to smoke herbal cigarettes on stage.
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“I had to get better at inhaling,” he said of the act of smoking. In that interview, Clooney told the Times that eight of his aunts and uncles died from lung cancer. “I go outside so the kids don’t see and smoke a little bit.”
George Clooney on Feb. 18, 2025. XNY/Star Max/GC Images
Good Night, and Good Luck follows Murrow’s public conflict with U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s during McCarthy’s infamous tenure investigating supposed communist sympathizers within the U.S. during the height of the Cold War.
When 60 Minutes asked Clooney, who has been acting for the screen since 1978, if he wished he had made the move to Broadway earlier in his career, he said, “I don’t know that I could’ve. I wasn’t- I didn’t do the work required to get there.”
Good Night, and Good Luck officially opens Thursday, April 3 at the Winter Garden Theatre in N.Y.C. Prior to the stage role, Clooney most recently directed 2023’s The Boys in the Boat and appeared in 2024 movies Wolfs and IF.
