Joshua Jackson Shares a Great George Clooney ‘Ocean’s 11’ Story

Joshua Jackson has been telling the same George Clooney story for 25 years, and it still holds up.

It starts at the poker table in Ocean's Eleven, the scene where Jackson plays himself while Brad Pitt's character teaches a table of celebrities how to draw out a bluff. Jackson was 23 or 24 at the time, sitting across from Pitt and Clooney with Steven Soderbergh directing. The meta-question of the moment, as he put it, was whether he could share a frame with those two and not disappear into the woodwork.

The real story happened off camera. Between shots, Jackson weaseled his way into a conversation in the wings with Clooney, Pitt, the director, the producer, and a few others. On the sound stage sat twelve Indian motorcycles, and Jackson, a self-described gearhead, asked what they were.

They were gifts, Clooney explained. Presents for his friends, the kind of thing you do when you're a movie star, except his friends had to go to Italy to get them, so he was having all twelve shipped to Italy.

Mid-story, a production assistant came around to see if anyone needed anything. She offered Pitt a cup of coffee. She offered Jackson, in his telling, a "young schmuck, can I get you a cup of coffee?" Then she got to Clooney, and as she said his name, she swooned. Her brain short-circuited mid-sentence.

Clooney caught her without breaking his sentence. "No, that's okay, babe, I got it," he said, set her back on her feet, and went straight back into the motorcycle story. He didn't pause. It didn't seem to register.

The way Jackson read it, so many people swoon in Clooney's presence that catching one mid-conversation is just reflex. "He's just like, nah, I got you, it's okay," Jackson said.

He still can't quite believe it. And if the whole thing was somehow a setup, Jackson figures Clooney earned the credit anyway. It's the best setup he's had, and he's been telling it for a quarter century.