Yes, George Clooney Really Gave Away $14 Million in Cash to His Friends

For years, there has been a rumor that George Clooney gave 14 of his closest friends $1 million in cash each. The star now reveals the truth.

You would naturally assume that being close friends with a major movie star like George Clooney would be rewarding. However, for a select group of Clooney’s closest friends, it was literally rewarding when the movie icon decided to pay them each $1 million in cash.

The story was first told by Rande Gerber (Clooney’s business partner in Casamigos Tequila and the husband of supermodel Cindy Crawford) to MSNBC’s Headliners back in 2017 that Clooney had given his 14 closest friends $1 million each. However, Clooney had never confirmed the story himself, so it just went down as a fanciful Hollywood story. Clooney, though, recently confirmed the tale.

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In an interview with GQ, Clooney was asked about the story and at first, he tried to play coy, but then he just told the truth. He confirmed that it happened and explained why he did it. It was in 2013, when he had met his future wife, Amal Alamuddin, but was not yet dating her. He reflected on how he did not have any family, but he did have a close group of friends who, “over a period of 35 years, helped me in one way or another. I’ve slept on their couches when I was broke. They loaned me money when I was broke. They helped me when I needed help over the years. And I’ve helped them over the years. We’re all good friends. And I thought, you know, without them I don’t have any of this. And we’re all really close, and I just thought basically if I get hit by a bus, they’re all in the will. So why the fuck am I waiting to get hit by a bus?”

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Clooney had recently come in to some big money from the recent hit film, Gravity, where he and the other star of the film, Sandra Bullock, had taken a percentage of the film’s profits in lieu of a big salary and the movie was a surprise blockbuster. The next step was to find a way to get $14 million in cash.

The GQ article explained Clooney’s plan:

Clooney did some research, and what he found was that in downtown Los Angeles, in an undisclosed location, there is a place you can go, “and they have giant pallets of cash.” So Clooney got an old beat-up van that said “Florist” on it, like he was in a heist movie, and he drove downtown, and he got in an elevator with the florist’s van, and he took the van down to the vault and loaded it up with cash. He told no one but his assistant “and a couple of security guys that were shitting themselves. And we brought it up, and I bought 14 Tumi bags, and then I packed in a million bucks, cash, which isn’t as much as you think it is, weight-wise, into these Tumi bags.”

Gerber noted that Clooney even paid the taxes on the money, so that the men could each have the money free and clear. Gerber explained how big of a deal this was to some of the men, “One was working at a bar in Texas at the airport, trying just to support his family. Rides a bicycle to work every day. I mean these are guys that took care of George and now he’s giving it all back. And George said, ‘Not only that, I have paid everyone’s taxes so this million dollars is yours.'”

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About The Author Brian Cronin (14448 Articles Published)

CBR Senior Writer Brian Cronin has been writing professionally about comic books for over a dozen years now at CBR (primarily with his “Comics Should Be Good” series of columns, including Comic Book Legends Revealed). He has written two books about comics for Penguin-Random House – Was Superman a Spy? And Other Comic Book Legends Revealed and Why Does Batman Carry Shark Repellent? And Other Amazing Comic Book Trivia! and one book, 100 Things X-Men Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die, from Triumph Books. His writing has been featured at ESPN.com, the Los Angeles Times, About.com, the Huffington Post and Gizmodo. He features legends about entertainment and sports at his website, Legends Revealed. Follow him on Twitter at @Brian_Cronin and feel free to e-mail him suggestions for stories about comic books that you’d like to see featured at brianc@cbr.com!

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