They’ve worked on six movies together, the first of which being Ocean’s Eleven in 2001 as part of an ensemble cast and 2022’s Ticket to Paradise sees George Clooney and Julia Roberts reunite once more. As longtime friends, the duo has undeniable on-screen chemistry, leading some fans to wonder if George Clooney and Julia Roberts have ever dated.
Ticket to Paradise is the first romantic comedy either of them has starred in for quite some time. For Clooney, his last rom-com was in 1996 with One Fine Day and for Roberts, America’s Sweethearts from 2001 is the last movie she deemed a classic rom-com worth her time until Ticket to Paradise. She noted that the genre isn’t as plentiful (or as good) as it has been in the past. “People sometimes misconstrue the amount of time that’s gone by that I haven’t done a romantic comedy as my not wanting to do one,” Roberts said. “If I had read something that I thought was that Notting Hill-level of writing or My Best Friend’s Wedding-level of madcap fun, I would do it. They didn’t exist until this movie Ticket to Paradise,” she told Variety in April 2022. She added that rom-coms are “a genre that I love to participate in and watch, and I think they are hard to get right. There is a really simple math to it, but how do you make it special?”
In Ticket to Paradise, Roberts and Clooney play a “divorced couple that travels to Bali to stop their daughter from making the same mistake they think they made 25 years ago,” per the film’s official synopsis. So, if they play a divorced couple on-screen, is there a George Clooney-Julia Roberts dating history the actors can draw from IRL? Read on.
Did George Clooney & Julia Roberts ever date?
Did George Clooney and Julia Roberts ever date? No, they’ve never been romantically linked but they have been friends for a long time, having met on the set of Ocean’s 11 in 2001. For Ticket to Paradise, Clooney said the script was “clearly” written for him and Roberts. She agreed. “It somehow only made sense with George, just based on our chemistry,” she explained to the New York Times in an interview published in September 2022. “We have a friendship that people are aware of, and we’re going into it as this divorced couple. Half of America probably thinks we are divorced, so we have that going for us.” Clooney added, “We should be divorced because I’m married now, so that would be really bad. Just saying,” in reference to his wife-of-eight years, human rights lawyer Amal Clooney (née Alamuddin).
Ocean’s Eleven courtesy of Everett Collection
For all their natural comradery, the duo reflected on how awkward it was to share a kiss for their latest film together (they have played romantic interests in the past, most notably Danny Ocean and Tess in the Ocean’s franchise). “One kiss. And we did it for, like, six months,” Roberts told the Times. Clooney quipped: “Yeah. I told my wife, ‘It took 80 takes.’ She was like, ‘What the hell?’” Roberts elaborated further: “It took 79 takes of us laughing and then the one take of us kissing.” In an interview with Variety, Roberts joked that the movie could be undone by all the pressure on it to be considered good. “I think it’s so funny and George is so funny and George and I together, it’s probably going to be terrible because there’s too much potential for it to be great, it’ll just implode on it itself,” she said sarcastically.
Roberts and Clooney are super close though. While in COVID-era Australia filming Ticket to Paradise, they (as well as Amal and the Clooney children) had to quarantine together on the tropical paradise of Hamilton Island. “The Clooneys saved me from complete loneliness and despair. We were in a bubble, and it’s the longest I’ve ever been away from my family. I don’t think I’ve spent that much time by myself since I was 25,” Roberts said in the New York Times interview. “Being in Australia was really challenging because of all the Covid regulations, and I think it’s a real testament to friendship and to the creative environment we were in that it wasn’t even harder because I’m not built to be one person anymore.”
We’ve mentioned Clooney’s personal life—a wife and two five-year-old children, Ella and Alexander—but what about Roberts? She’s been married to cinematographer Danny Moder for 20 years; they tied the knot in 2002. They have three children together: Hazel, Phinnaeus and Henry. Before that, Roberts was married to musician Lyle Lovett for two years, but they divorced in 1995.
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The Clooney-Roberts on-screen chemistry has also been pretty lucrative, with Ticket to Paradise earning nearly $60 million at the international box office. They’ve starred in five movies—Ocean’s Eleven, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Ocean’s Twelve and Money Monster, and worked together as actor-producer in an additional title, Osage Country. They hit a new milestone on October 9, 2022, as the combined gross amount of their projects has totaled more than $1 billion. Deadline reported that Ticket to Paradise is Roberts’ biggest film at the international box office since 2017’s Wonder and Clooney’s biggest overseas hit since 2016’s Monuments Men. One of the biggest rumors of Roberts’ tenure as a rom-com icon was that her trademark smile was insured for $30 million. The Oscar-winner debunked that myth, though, telling the New York Times: “No. What am I insuring it against? How would you do that? … I mean, if my smile was insured, there would be someone at my house on a nightly basis saying, ‘You need to floss longer.’”
When did Julia Roberts and George Clooney meet?
When did Julia Roberts and George Clooney meet? Despite being some of the biggest stars in Hollywood throughout the 90s, Clooney and Roberts met on the set of Ocean’s Eleven and they clicked instantly. “We met with Steven Soderbergh, and we sat on the floor of a hotel and made jokes for about five hours,” Clooney said at the global press conference for Ticket to Paradise. “For us, it’s always been fairly easy, you know? So when you get sent a script…I remember reading it and calling Julia and I said ‘It only works if you do it’, and she said the same thing, so luckily it worked out. It was lucky nonsense. But it’s fun to work with friends.”
In a 2020 interview with GQ, Clooney recalled meeting Roberts for the first time on the Ocean‘s set. “I remember Julia. I didn’t know her. I’d never met her and she was making $20 million dollars a film. And we just talked Brad [Pitt] into doing it and Matt [Damon] into doing it and we wanted Julia to do it. So, I put a $20 dollar bill on a script and I sent it to her. And I said, ‘I hear you get $20 a picture now.’” The rest, as they say, is history.
Ticket to Paradise is in theaters now and will be available to stream on Peacock on December 5, 2022.
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