In Jay Kelly, George Clooney plays a film star on a self-reflective journey through Europe.<\/p>\n
The film, which is premiering on Thursday night at the Venice Film Festival, explores questions about finding oneself while also poking fun at the business of being a major celebrity in the world and all the people on their payroll around them.<\/p>\n
Hours before the premiere, Clooney was absent from the news conference with his castmates because of a \u201cbad sinus infection\u201d, the moderator explained.<\/p>\n
Yet he rallied for the red carpet, wearing a classic tuxedo with his wife Amal by his side, looking the part of A-list movie star.<\/p>\n
Nicole Avant, Adam Sandler, George Clooney, Laura Dern and Riley Keough pose for photographers (Scott A Garfitt\/Invision\/AP)<\/p>\n
His co-star Laura Dern earlier praised his \u201camazing, raw, true performance\u201d in the film, which is in competition for the festival\u2019s top awards.<\/p>\n
Jay Kelly also star Adam Sandler, who plays Jay\u2019s manager, Dern, who takes on the role of publicist, and Billy Crudup, as the most talented guy in his acting class who did not make it big.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve always appreciated my manager, my agent, my publicist,\u201d Sandler said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know how hard they work and how difficult it is to hear my ups and downs in life and back me up no matter what \u2026 I could get loud at times.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jay Kelly was directed by Noah Baumbach, who co-wrote it with actor Emily Mortimer. He had always wanted to work with Clooney and when they had hit on the idea for this film, his was the name that came to mind, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe started to just say, \u2018this will be George\u2019,\u201d Baumbach said. \u201cWe all, watching it, have a history with George just like the people in the movie have a history with Jay.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sandler said it was a gift to be working with Baumbach again, after they collaborated on the 2017 film The Meyerowitz Stories.<\/p>\n
\u201cI could not be more proud,\u201d Sandler said. \u201cYou lock in, you\u2019re invested, your heart gets broken, you get relief, you get moments of tension. He knows how to do everything and then he finds places to make you laugh.\u201d<\/p>\n
Amal and George Clooney on the red carpet (Alessandra Tarantino\/Invision\/AP)<\/p>\n
Baumbach said Sandler is a very different breed of film star from Jay Kelly, who has ostracised nearly everyone in his life from the people on his payroll to his family. He wanted Sandler\u2019s character Ron to reflect that balance that he admires.<\/p>\n
\u201cAdam really does have such grace and such loyalty and generosity and heart,\u201d Baumbach said.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe really has found a way to successfully sort of navigate this whole thing and do it so beautifully.\u201d<\/p>\n
Baumbach was at the Venice Film Festival recently with his Don DeLillo adaptation White Noise.<\/p>\n
Like White Noise, Jay Kelly is a Netflix-produced film. After taking a year off from the festival, the streaming giant is back with three major films playing in competition, including Guillermo del Toro\u2019s Frankenstein and Kathryn Bigelow\u2019s political thriller A House Of Dynamite, debuting later in the festival.<\/p>\n
The 82nd edition of the festival began on Wednesday on the Lido, the barrier island that hosts the Venice Film Festival.<\/p>\n
It runs through to September 6. Thursday\u2019s festival is also hosting the premiere of the latest Yorgos Lanthimos and Emma Stone collaboration, Bugonia.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source uk.news.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In Jay Kelly, George Clooney plays a film star on a self-reflective journey through Europe. The film, which is premiering on Thursday night at the Venice Film Festival, explores questions about finding oneself while also poking fun at the business of being a major celebrity in the world and all the people on their payroll […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1987404,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25173],"tags":[310567,358151,32720,339940,36101,339946,333428],"class_list":["post-1987403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists","tag-adam-sandler","tag-film-star","tag-george-clooney","tag-jay-kelly","tag-laura-dern","tag-noah-baumbach","tag-venice-film-festival"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/George-Clooney-rallies-for-Venice-premiere-of-Jay-Kelly-after.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1987403","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1987403"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1987403\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1987404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1987403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1987403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1987403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}