Anna Kendrick will never forget this pep talk from costar George Clooney.
During a new episode of Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace? released Friday, Nov. 8, the actress, 39, recalled Clooney’s encouragement when they worked together on the 2009 film Up in the Air.
Speaking about working with Clooney, 63, early in her career, Kendrick said it was “absolutely terrifying — I mean, completely terrifying.”
“To other people he is kind of capital-G George, you know? And he works really hard to make you forget that and feel comfortable,” she continued. “The very, very first shot that he and I did together was my first shot in the movie.”
She added, “We were standing on this people-mover, and we’re kind of waiting, cameras pretty far away, and he said, ‘God, do you get nervous on the first day? I get so nervous. Do you get insecure? I get really insecure.’
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Anna Kendrick as Natalie Keener and George Clooney as Ryan Bingham in ‘Up in the Air’
“And I was like, ‘Yes, I do, George. I do. I totally get nervous. I totally get insecure,’ ” Kendrick recalled.
She added, “And he was doing this whole thing about, like, ‘I worry. Like, did they even hire the right guy?’”
The Pitch Perfect star said it wasn’t until years later that she came to a revelation that Clooney was trying to help calm her nerves.
“It wasn’t for years that suddenly that memory popped into my brain, and I thought, ‘No, he does not! No, he does not get nervous, and he does not get insecure or worry that they’ve hired the wrong guy,’ ” she said.
“Maybe that’s something he dealt with earlier in his career, but it was such a gift for him to say that, because it felt like, ‘Oh, okay, I can bring my anxiety into the moment, and someone is going to hold space for that and be cool with that,’ ” she said.
“It really, really set me at ease. And was a complete fiction!” she added.
Up in the Air earned six Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, plus nods for Kendrick and Vera Farmiga in Best Supporting Actress, Clooney in Best Actor, and Jason Reitman in Best Director.
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Anna Kendrick on Oct. 22, 2024
Kendrick previously spoke to Business Insider last month about working with Clooney in the movie.
“He was really the first person that I worked with where I would see him listening to the notes that other actors would get and he would adjust his off-camera performance to help elicit whatever adjustment was called for,” she said.
Kendrick makes her directorial debut in the new true-crime thriller Woman of the Hour, in which she also stars. In October, Kendrick told PEOPLE that directing and starring in the film “was a little bit like directing with a blindfold on.”
“I could basically run to the monitor, ask to see 30 seconds from the middle of that take and be like, ‘Okay, fingers crossed that there’s no surprises when I get into the edit,’ ” she said of when she’d finish performing in a scene.
