
Jeff Goldblum reveals he was 'very starstruck' meeting George Clooney
Hollywood star
was "very starstruck" when he got to meet English star
for the first time.
The 72-year-old actor said that he was very taken aback when he got to see the Ticket to Paradise star backstage at his Broadway show Good Night, and Good Luck alongside Beatles legend Sir
, reports femalefirst.co.uk.
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Speaking on Late Night with Seth Meyers, he said: "I was very excited. After the play, I was looking and (McCartney and I) both got a chance to go backstage and meet George and the cast. I saw him in the flesh for the first time ever, and there he was."
"I just thought 'My golly, I'm very starstruck,' because he means a lot to me."
The Jurassic Park actor described Clooney as being "very nice" to him and couldn't help but "brag" in revealing that it was the former ER star who asked him for a picture, as opposed to the other way round.
"He was very nice.This is bragging, I shouldn't do it. But he said, 'Jeff, Jeff Goldblum. I love Jeff Goldblum. Come here, Jeff, let's take a picture,' and all that stuff. It made my life and my year."
Meanwhile, Goldblum heaped praise on the Beatles and recounted discovering the rock band, which also consisted of
, Ringo Starr, and George Harrison - in his early teen years.
He added: "Everybody, you've all got stories like this. But I was a kid when I Want to Hold Your Hand and 'She Loves You, came out. And I remember Suzy Connolly ... in her cut-off jean shorts, and I was like 12, 13... And they went, 'Here, come and listen to this song.' It's all mixed in my nostalgic bosom in a way that's very, very exciting and meaningful."
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Still, the JCB Prize for Literature came on the scene with a grand flourish and with seemingly powerful intent, as exemplified by the extravagant marketing, advertising, and event-management that went into the first two years of the prize with Rana Dasgupta as the director. Dasgupta, for reasons never made clear to the literary community, was let go of immediately after the second year of the prize, and a few months later, Mita Kapur, founder of the literary agency Siyahi, took over, leading the prize over the next five years, including the difficult ones during the pandemic. To its credit, despite having to go online for everything, the prize did not falter in its commitment during this period, returning to something like the grandeur of its pre-pandemic version from 2022 onwards. What changed, then, forcing the decision to close down? Maybe it is important to accept and acknowledge here that the corporate entity behind the prize, JCB, has had its own inadvertent image problem in India with its bulldozers being pressed into service for demolition of private property as a means of punitive administrative steps undertaken by several state governments. This even led to an open letter criticising the prize, signed by over 120 writers, translators, and publishers in 2024. But the company, of course, has not gone public with its reasons for stopping – or, at the very least, pausing – the prize. Did the prize make an impact? Perhaps the more important question, however, is what sort of JCB-Prize-shaped hole there will be in India's literary world now. To make even informed guesses, it is, of course, necessary to consider the achievements of the prize over its seven years. And the very first question here is, are seven years long enough for a literary prize to have made significant effect? The JCB Prize for Literature was by no means the first high-profile literary prize in India. The Crossword Book Award was instituted by the bookshop chain back in 1998 and continues to be run despite a brief break. The Hindu Literary Prize began life in 2010, continuing the till the outbreak of the pandemic in 2019. The Sahitya Akademi awards were established as far back as in 1954, and continue to be given out. And there was, of course, the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature. Stepping as it did into a space already primed for literary awards, the JCB Prize had the luxury of being able to hit the ground running. Given this backdrop, seven years was long enough to build on an impactful beginning. For comparison, remember that Tomb of Sand won the International Booker in its seventh year. The greatest opportunity for the prize was to create interest – and, by extension, a return to a reading culture – in not just the winning book but the entire list of shortlisted and even longlisted titles. Over seven years, these numbered 71 (in 2019, two of Perumal Murugan's novels were considered as a combined work) and 35, respectively, amounting to a fine showcase of fiction from India. And yet, despite efforts ranging from special films, appearances at literary festivals, and bookshop partnerships, none of the novels could be said to have gained a boost because of their appearance on the longlist or shortlist. Why, even the winning books have not reported anything remotely close to the kind of sales that India's two International Booker Prize winners did. Consider the seven fine novels that have won the JCB Prize between 2018 and 2024. 2018: Jasmine Days, Benyamin, translated from the Malayalam by Shahnaz Habib. 2019: The Far Field, Madhuri Vijay. 2020: Moustache, S Hareesh, translated from the Malayalam by Jayasree Kalathil. 2021: Delhi, A Soliloquy, M Mukundan, translated from the Malayalam by Fathima EV and Nandakumar K. 2022: The Paradise of Food, Khalid Jawed, translated from the Urdu by Baran Farooqi. 2023: Fire Bird, Perumal Murugan, translated from the Tamil by Janaki Kannan. 2024: Lorenzo Searches for the Meaning of Life, Upamanyu Chatterjee. While official sales figures are not available, the informal response from publishers was that none of these books became break-out successes among book-buyers. Play Arguably the most important actual achievement of the prize, therefore, was to create expectations of winning, among writers and publishers. For the first time, both of these groups thought actively about the possibility of winning the prize when they put out a title. Perhaps the great change in publishing programmes came because of the decision of the prize to consider translated books as well as those written in English. As many as 19 of the 36 shortlisted titles over seven years have been translations from various Indian languages. While it might be an exaggeration to state that publishers looked at translations with greater intent because of the chances of one of them winning the prize, there was undoubtedly a renewed focus on translated because of the prize. The impact of the end of the prize, then, will be felt mostly by the publishing community. Most of all, probably, by the writers and translators who will not win the Rs 25-lakh and Rs 10-lakh purses. With serious writing being a monetarily dismal practice in India, awards like these can go a long way towards supporting future work by prize-winning authors. For readers, unfortunately, the closure of the prize may have very little impact. Still, the JCB Prize for Literature has create a model. The literary community will certainly be hoping for a second version of the prize – or a new one to replace it.