George Clooney has said his new movie The Tender Bar gave him a welcome break from the “pretty dark” types of film he normally works on.
The Hollywood star, who directed the film, appeared on the red carpet for its UK premiere on Sunday at the London Film Festival.
The coming-of-age film, which is based on a book of the same name by J.R. Moehringer, tells the story of a boy who seeks father figures at a bar run by his uncle.
Clooney told the PA news agency: “Most of the films I do are pretty dark and this one felt light and it felt like the world was pretty dark so I wanted to work on something that was a little lighter, you know.”
He added it was a good script and “you don’t get to read a lot of good scripts in your life”.
“So I read it and I thought it was a good script and I thought I knew how to do it and I also kind of felt like I wanted to work on a film like this,” Clooney said.
Clooney appeared on the red carpet for the event at the Royal Festival Hall with his wife Amal Clooney.
The Tender Bar stars Ben Affleck as bar owner Charlie in the film, which is set in New York, while Tye Sheridan will play his nephew J.R.
Lily Rabe, who plays the boy’s mother, said Clooney was “the right guy for this story”.
“I felt there was simplicity in the story and I so admired the story that George was telling,” she told PA.
She said her character has an “incredible will”, adding: “She’s incredibly resilient, she keeps getting knocked down.
“Her circumstances aren’t great but she really has this optimism that I was so attracted to.
“George is similar. He’s a very optimistic guy so he was just the right guy for this story.”
The Tender Bar will be in cinemas on December 22 before being made available on Amazon Prime Video.
