There’s no way our eyes can wander off of George Clooney for even a split second when he is on the screen. With a resume filled to the brim with blockbuster hits, the man is one of the most suave actors of all time. We are pretty sure that at least at one point in our lives all of us have either wanted to date him or be him!
However, George Clooney’s life has not always been great. Just like any other actor out there, he too has faced his fair share of downs in his expansive career. This includes the time when the renowned actor contemplated taking his own life after a horrible accident in one of his films injured his spine.
George Clooney Wanted to Take His Own Life
It was the year 2005 when George Clooney starred alongside Matt Damon in Stephen Gaghan’s political drama, Syriana. The film was met with positive reviews from critics, who awarded it a score of 73% on Rotten Tomatoes. Syriana managed to find itself a spot in many critics’ top ten lists in the year. In fact, everyone loved Clooney’s performance as Bob Barnes so much that the actor ended up winning an Oscar for the role.
Unfortunately, before all the celebration, Clooney was going through a terrible time in his life owing to a stunt gone horribly wrong. The actor ended up injuring his spine so badly that spinal fluid started coming out of his nose.
Talking to Rolling Stone, Clooney recalled the painful days of being in a hospital bed that followed and how he actually contemplated ending his life because of the unbearable pain.
“I was at a point where I thought, I can’t exist like this. I can’t actually live.’ I was lying in a hospital bed with an IV in my arm, unable to move, having these headaches where it feels like you’re having a stroke, and for a short three-week period, I started to think, ‘I may have to do something drastic about this.’
You start to think in terms of, you don’t want to leave a mess, so go in the garage, go in the car, start the engine. It seems like the nicest way to do it, but I never thought I’d get there. See, I was in a place where I was trying to figure out how to survive.”
What exactly had happened was the Gravity actor ended up tearing his dura mater which is a sheath that encloses the cerebral spinal fluid around the nerves of the spinal cord and the brain. Due to him tearing this membrane, the fluid began leaking out causing horrible pain and headaches. The actor went through multiple surgeries to help ease the pain.
George Clooney Talks About Going to Pain Management Therapy
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Clooney opened up about exactly what would go down during his time in the hospital. He talked about going through about fifteen blood patches, which are much more painful than they sound.
“The doctors did these blood patches where they tie you down to a bed, and you’re awake because they have a long needle and need to know if they’re touching your spinal cord, and they take blood out and shoot it directly into your spinal column to try to get the blood to coagulate in those spots. I did about 15 of those over 15 days. It’s like getting a spinal tap every day, and you’re awake…I thought I was going to die.”
After being given a variety of drugs including morphine and Vicodin which gave him anxiety and stomach aches, Clooney decided to turn to pain management therapy.
“I went to a pain-management guy whose idea was, ‘You can’t mourn for how you used to feel, because you’re never going to feel that way again.’”
Even though Clooney has since healed, he still feels pangs of headaches from time to time. Luckily, he has stated that they aren’t as terrible as they used to be.
Syriana is available to stream on Hoopla.
Source: Rolling Stone
