George's Health Crisis
'Ocean's Twelve' star
Bothered last October by a strange nasal drip and a non-stop headache that he says felt "like an ice-cream brain freeze 24 hours a day," Clooney tells the mag on newsstands Sept. 6 that he was finally diagnosed with a "torn dura," a rupture of the sac surrounding his spine. The tear was causing actual spinal cord fluid to leak out of his nose.
Despite pain so intense he could barely walk, the 44-year-old actor-director still appeared on the red carpet at the 'Ocean's Twelve' premiere last December, although he was too weak to climb three stairs up to "The Insider"'s own platform. (We brought our cameras to him.)
Days later, he was scooted into surgery for an operation in which, the magazine says, "doctors shored up his spine with plastic bolts."
He underwent physical rehab and was benched from his favorite off-set past-time, basketball, but was back on the road January 12 promoting 'Ocean's Twelve' in Tokyo, this time wearing a thick, white bandage around his neck.
"What you learn after you're 40 is, it's just about plugging up the holes in the boat," he tells Men's Vogue.
He reportedly hasn't slowed down much, and still has several projects in the pipeline, including 'Syriana,' a complex 'Traffic'-style film about terrorism and oil bartering, 'Good Night and Good Luck,' a new project he's directing about radio and journalism pioneer EDWARD R. MURROW and a future COEN BROTHERS movie.
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