"I'M NOT DONE YET"

With ‘Jay Kelly,’ 64-year-old George Clooney looks back — and ahead — on his life and career.

- GLENN WHIPP

GEORGE CLOONEY AND I ARE TALKING in a hotel room in Beverly Hills, the same hotel where we met 27 years ago when he was promoting “Out of Sight” and he told me that leading men had about a decade to make their mark and it was all downhill from there. “No one could be more surprised than me that I’m 64 years old and still getting to do what I love to do,” Clooney says in that practiced, grounded, charming way of his. Sixty-four, huh? Since he brought it up ... Have you queued up the Beatles song since celebrating your birthday this year? “I actually got a message from Paul, which is pretty cool,” Clooney says, smiling. Wait. Paul McCartney sent you a message on your birthday? “Yeah, it was a video of him playing ‘When I’m 64,’” Clooney says. He pauses to let this sink in — maybe for the both of us. “I never really thought when I was cutting tobacco in Augusta, Ky., that I would meet Paul, much less become friends with him,” Clooney says. “I feel very in awe. In the scheme of people, you look at Michael Jordan as the best to ever play the game. Paul’s got to be in the conversation as one of the greats of all time. So it’s really something to have him call up and do ‘When I’m 64’ for you.” During our digressive conversation, I learn, not surprisingly, that pretty much anybody who’s anybody resides in Clooney’s phone contact list. “I’m old. I've been around,” says Clooney, currently starring in Noah Baumbach’s “Jay Kelly,” playing a famous and, frankly, selfish actor taking stock late in life. Is there anyone Clooney hasn't met? Let’s find out.

So McCartney sends you a video for your birthday. Do you ever send him a message out of the blue?

Sure, from time to time. He had this song come out, this beautiful Beatles song that had never been released.