I have found that in life, friends come and go. They’re a dime a dozen. But real friends, the ones that you can get close to, are rare treasures that don’t come along that often – especially when you’re on top.
Let’s face it, we might glamorize the lives of the rich and famous but if we really stop to think about it, their lives must be somewhat lonely on top. I can’t imagine that it is easy to find true friends who aren’t just by your side to reap the benefits of your status.
So, what do you do with true blue friends when you’re one of the rich and famous? You gift them an unexpected $1 million in cash of course!
That is precisely what George Clooney did for a few lucky friends of his back in 2013. We all know that George Clooney is one of Hollywood’s big A-listers. He has been in plenty of blockbusters and is easily a Tinsletown legend.
But one of his close friends, Rande Gerber, made headlines back in 2017 when he revealed that Clooney had gifted him – and 13 others – a huge cash gift back in 2013. And it wasn’t just any cash gift, it was a briefcase full of $1 million. This happened exactly one year prior to Clooney marrying his wife, Amal, and settling down with a family.
Clooney didn’t open up about the gift until 2020, when he said to GQ, “I was a single guy. All of us were aging. I was 52 or something and most of my friends are older than me. And we’re all really close, and I just thought basically if I get hit by a bus, they’re all in the will. So why the f— am I waiting to get hit by a bus?”
Given that Clooney has had a wonderful career spanning many years, it figures that he felt the time had come to pay his friends back by showering them with some of the wealth he’d accumulated over the years. As the star admitted himself, he wouldn’t have gotten to where he is without their help along the way.
He explained further to the magazine, “What I do have are these guys who’ve all, over a period of 35 years, helped me in one way or another. I’ve slept on their couches when I was broke. They loaned me money when I was broke. And I thought, you know, without them I don’t have any of this.”
In order to give this generous gift to his inner circle, Clooney actually sort of arranged an elaborate rendezvous that was something out of a heist movie. First, he arranged for the bags of money to be escorted from the bank to an undisclosed location in Los Angeles by a pair of security guards. Then, they were delivered to his home via a beat-up-looking van that said “florist” on the side.
The following day, his friends had no idea what was waiting for them when they were called over to his home. He explained to them that this was a gift to say, “thank you” for each one of them helping to get him to where he is today. That is so sweet!
Naturally, all these friends were absolutely shocked to discover what was waiting for them in their bags.
According to the Huffington Post, Gerber, himself, said toMSNBC in 2017, “One [of the friends] was working at a bar in Texas at the airport, trying just to support his family. Rides a bicycle to work every day. I mean, these are the guys that took care of George, and now he’s giving it all back.”