Video: Actors Roundtable for LA Times: George Clooney, Delroy Lindo, Riz Ahmed, Steven Yeun, & Gary Oldman

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Actors Roundtable: Sobs of doubt, weeping on screen and thoughts of Chadwick Boseman



Impostor syndrome: Everybody feels it, even Hollywood’s most seasoned stars. In a conversation recorded last month, actors Delroy Lindo, Riz Ahmed, Steven Yeun, Gary Oldman and George Clooney copped to the pangs of self-doubt they’ve experienced in their careers and the “jet fuel” that’s helped them power through.

“This idea of the impostor syndrome, it’s real with every actor,” said Clooney, who directed himself as a lone astronomer left on a dying Earth in the sci-fi adaptation “The Midnight Sky.” “Because to be successful at any level in this industry means that you’re beating such huge odds.”

Beaming in remotely for the annual Envelope Oscar Roundtable, held virtually this year due to the pandemic, the quintet vowed to raise a glass when it’s safe to do so. They shared stories and laughs, as well as the sentiment that’s been on their minds now more than ever — gratitude.

“It’s a crappy year, and we don’t get to be in the same room together,” Clooney said. “And if we were sitting in a room right now, all of us together, there’d be an empty chair for Chadwick Boseman.”

George Clooney: It’s been nine months mostly inside the house. I have 3-year-old twins, so that’s been an adventure in a lot of washing dishes and changing diapers. My own, mostly. My father’s 87 years old and lives in Kentucky. So I miss being with my family. We have a great deal of gratitude for the fact that we were able to be in our homes and have some security, because there are an awful lot of people around the world that don’t.

George, your portrayal of Augustine in “The Midnight Sky” is an interior one; it’s in the silences that we largely come to know him. How did you approach it?

Clooney: I was directing, so I wanted to make sure I had as few lines as possible! The character that I was playing in this, his job is to seek redemption. In some ways, those are characters that are always interesting. I played a pediatrician on “ER,” and [he] was an alcoholic and a womanizer and did everything terrible — but at the end of the day, [he] would always save the kid. So people go, “Well, he really likes kids.” In some ways I was set free [in “Midnight Sky”] by the fact that I had this little girl who doesn’t speak [costar Caoilinn Springall], who I had to take care of, which frees you up to not have to do any of the things that oftentimes characters in the lead have to do, which is guide the audience through a film. So I was helped out by the other elements of the film.

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