Julia Roberts, George Clooney joke filming one kiss for 'Ticket to Paradise' took 'six months' and '80 takes'

Amal and George Clooney enjoyed a night out in New York City Thursday. The British lawyer, 44, was looking glamorous in a black sequin mini-dress. Her husband of eight years, George, was seen in a more casual look, pairing a navy polo shirt with a pair of light denim jeans.

The dinosaurs have done it as Universal/Amblin’s Jurassic World Dominion crossed the $1B mark at the global box office with Thursday’s business included. It took a little while, but that shouldn’t diminish that this makes the Colin Trevorrow-directed installment one of only three films to the milestone since the beginning of the pandemic. It is the No. 2 film of 2022 behind Top Gun: Maverick.

George Clooney has shared the awkward story of when he had to kiss Julia Roberts in Ticket to Paradise in front of his wife Amal Clooney.  The Ocean’s Eleven co-stars shared the anecdote when promoting their new romantic comedy, in which Clooney and Roberts play divorced parents who try to stop their daughter’s wedding to a man she’s just met in Hawaii.  Clooney, 61 and Roberts, 54 have been friends for decades and reflected on working together again, especially in a rom-com, on the Zoe Ball Breakfast Show this morning.

While the Emmys drew mixed reviews, the film festivals closed to strong applause this week, not only for their movies (we’d forgotten some) but for their star turnout (forgot a few of them, too).

Richard Kuipers Romantic comedies have never gone away, but mainstream examples with A-list stars have been pretty thin on the ground since the glory days of the ’90s and early 2000s, when “Pretty Woman,” “Notting Hill,” “Love Actually” and “Bridget Jones’s Diary” ruled at the box office. Bucking the trend is “Ticket to Paradise,” a glossy piece of fluff starring Hollywood royalty Julia Roberts and George Clooney as a divorced couple whose passion reignites in Bali during their hare-brained attempt to prevent their daughter from marrying a guy she’s only just met. While far from a classic of its kind, this is likely to be just the “Ticket” for general viewers relishing the chance to watch Roberts and Clooney trade poisonous barbs, before being struck by Cupid’s arrow all over again.  

Julia Roberts opened up about her special relationship with George Clooney and how he and his family “saved” her while they were filming Ticket to Paradise.

Julia Roberts poses alongside George and Amal Clooney at the Ticket to Paradise premiere at the Odeon Luxe Leicester Square on Wednesday (September 7) in London, England.

Zack Sharf Julia Roberts is returning to the romantic-comedy genre for the first time in over 20 years with the upcoming “Ticket for Paradise,” and she hopes audiences will finally appreciate the hard work that goes into making feel-good cinema. Roberts dominated the genre in the 1990s with hits such as “Pretty Woman” (1990), “Notting Hill” (1999) and “My Best Friend’s Wedding” (1997). The Oscar winner recently told The New York Times that she believes moviegoers didn’t appreciate the rom-com boom enough and all the hard work that went into it. “I think we didn’t appreciate the bumper crop of romantic comedies that we had then,” Roberts said. “You don’t see all the effort and puppet strings because it’s fun and sweet and people are laughing and kissing and being mischievous.”

George and Amal Clooney saved Julia Roberts from "complete loneliness and despair" as they filmed Ticket to Paradise in Australia under tight Covid-19 restrictions. The Ocean's Eleven co-stars and longtime friends lived Down Under to shoot the film between November 2021 and February this year, and while George had his wife and five-year-old twins with him, Julia left her family behind in America. In an interview with The New York Times, George explained that his frequent collaborator lived in the house below his and Amal's during the shoot.

Julia Roberts and George Clooney opened up about their quarantine bubble while filming "Ticket to Paradise" in Australia. "We started in Hamilton Island with all these wild birds, and Julia had the house down just below Amal and me and the kids," Clooney told The New York Times.  "I would come out in the early mornings and be like, 'Caa-caa,' and Julia would come out and be like, 'Caa-caa.' And then we'd bring her down a cup of coffee. She was Aunt Juju to my kids." Roberts noted the time in Australia filming was the "longest" she's ever been away from family.

George Clooney and Julia Roberts are opening up about their experience working on the set of their upcoming film ‘Ticket to Paradise,’ revealing that they had a lot of fun shooting some of the scenes and even took their time to perfect their on-screen kiss.During a recent interview with The New York Times, the Hollywood stars explained that while filming one of the scenes, where the two characters are reunited and share an emotional kiss, they had to do many takes.“Yeah. I told my wife, ‘It took 80 takes,’ ” the actor said about his wife’s reaction.

New York Times. “In fact, the characters’ names were originally Georgia and Julian. I hadn’t really done a romantic comedy since ‘One Fine Day’ [in 1996],” the “E.R.” alum added.