George Clooney Recalls the Worst Part of His Motorcycle Crash

It has been more than two years since George Clooney‘s 2018 motorcycle accident in Sardinia, Italy. Now fully recovered and thankful for life at home with wife Amal Clooney and their two children, 3-year-old twins Ella and Alexander, the 59-year-old actor is continuing to open up about the terrifying experience, recently recalling that the road to recovery he faced was not the worst part of the experience.

Speaking in the new issue of AARP the Magazine, The Midnight Sky actor revealed the hardest part of the ordeal was the lack of people who rushed to his aid when his scooter slammed head-on into a car. Before being rushed to the hospital for his injuries, Clooney told the outlet that instead of trying to help him, those who witnessed the accident were trying to take pictures of the aftermath and document what he called “the worst moment of my life.”

“I’m not a cynical guy, but I will always, always remember that moment because nobody was jumping to go call for help or coming to help. For them, the worst moment of my life was entertainment,” he said. “People are getting killed because they’re taking a shot of a car crash coming toward them. We’re living in this world where everybody is trying to make themselves fascinating or important or something. When the reality is: Put that phone down!”

Clooney was rushed to a hospital in Olbia, Sardinia, on July 10, 2018, after his scooter slammed head-on into a car that surveillance footage shows turned into his lane. Video of the crash showed how the impact threw Clooney into the air before landing on the ground. The actor was wearing a helmet at the time of the crash, which he later revealed when speaking to The Hollywood Reporter in 2019, split in half due to the collision. Clooney at the time said the crash “knocked me out of my shoes. I was hit hard. I was just waiting for the switch to turn off because I broke his windshield with my head, and I thought, ‘OK, well, that’s my neck.’”

Clooney was taken to the hospital following the crash after complaining of “a slight trauma to the pelvis and bruises to one leg and an arm.” Although he was released that same day with minor injuries, the actor said the scary accident forever-impacted how he lives life.

He told AARP the Magazine he lives with more precision and a little more care, stating, “I’m not a particularly religious guy. So I have to be skeptical about an afterlife. But as you get older, you start thinking, Well, wait a minute. It’s very hard for me to say, ‘Once you’re finished with this chassis that we’re in, you’re just done.’ My version of it is that you’re taking that one one-hundredth of a pound of energy that disappears when you die, and you’re jamming it right into the hearts of all the other people you’ve been close to.”