George Clooney Considered Suicide After Massive Back Injury on Film Set

George Clooney is one of the most respected actors of our time, and one of the few still compared to the Golden Age of Hollywood. And yet, in 2005, he was considered throwing it all away by taking his own life.

In the current issue of Rolling Stone, Clooney talks about a massive spinal injury he suffered while filming SYRIANA back in 2005. The role earned him a Best Supporting Actor Oscar, but the pain was so severe, he almost couldn’t take it anymore:

“I was at a point where I thought, ‘I can’t exist like this. I can’t actually live’…I was lying in a hospital bed with an IV in my arm, unable to move, having these headaches where it feels like you’re having a stroke, and for a short three-week period, I started to think, ‘I may have to do something drastic about this’…You start to think in terms of, you don’t want to leave a mess, so go in the garage, go in the car, start the engine. It seems like the nicest way to do it, but I never thought I’d get there. See, I was in a place where I was trying to figure out how to survive.”

Luckily, the veteran actor made it through. This year has been one of his best, with his third directorial effort, THE IDES OF MARCH, as well as Alexander Payne’s THE DESCENDANTS both getting rave reviews. Clooney is so confident in the latter movie, that he says it needs to get nominated for some awards:

“If it’s not nominated for Best Picture, I’ll be shocked. It’s that good.”

The new issue of Rolling Stone is on newsstands now.