George Clooney has revealed the deeply personal pain of holding his beloved sister’s hand as she died – and how losing his childhood companion forced him to confront just how quickly life can disappear.
As RadarOnline.com reported, the 65-year-old Hollywood star’s elder sister, Adelia ‘Ada’ Zeidler, died aged 65 in December after battling cancer.
Now, speaking about the loss at a masterclass at the Venice Film Festival in Italy, Clooney described being beside Zeidler during her final moments and said the experience transformed his perspective on the time he has left.
Clooney said: “She died very quickly, and I was with her when she died. And there was this feeling, being with her, holding her hand when she died, understanding how brief all of this is.
“It was minutes ago that she and I were little kids together; Minutes ago we were holding hands as little kids.”
The Ocean’s Eleven actor added the devastating experience had left him determined to concentrate on happiness rather than allow precious years to slip away.
He said: “Time goes fast. All of this. And so we have to find nothing but joy.”
Clooney had previously confirmed Zeidler’s death in an emotional statement, describing his sister as his ‘hero’ and praising the courage she showed while facing cancer.
He said: “My sister, Ada, was my hero.
“She faced down cancer with courage and humour. I’ve never met anyone so brave. Amal and I will miss her terribly.”
A Hollywood source close to Clooney told Radar in an exclusive interview: “George has carried an enormous amount of pain since Ada died, but much of it has remained intensely private. He was there holding her hand at the end, and that is an incredibly powerful memory that he has had to process away from the public eye. He adored his sister, and losing her has affected him far more deeply than most people would ever see.
“What has been particularly difficult for George is how quickly everything happened. There is something almost impossible for him to reconcile about remembering the two of them holding hands as children and then finding himself holding Ada’s hand again as her life came to an end, and he has carried a secret pain over this. That realization about how quickly the years had disappeared hit him incredibly hard.
“George is someone who normally uses humor to deal with difficult situations, but there was no disguising the grief he felt over Ada. She was part of his life long before Hollywood, the Oscars or any of the fame, and represented a connection to his childhood and the person he was before any of that happened. Her death left a huge hole in his life.
“Being with Ada during her final moments inevitably made George confront his own mortality. He came away from that experience thinking much more seriously about how limited everyone’s time is and how he wants to spend whatever time he has with Amal, their children, his parents and the people closest to him.
“George hasn’t wanted to make his grief into a public spectacle. A great deal of what he has been feeling has been dealt with quietly within the family. But talking about Ada in Venice was significant because it showed just how profoundly losing her changed his perspective on life.
“There is still tremendous sadness there. George can talk about finding joy because he has also experienced the opposite – the extraordinary pain of saying goodbye to somebody who had been beside him since childhood. Losing Ada reinforced for him that careers, awards and success ultimately matter far less than the time you have with the people you love.”
Zeidler died at St. Elizabeth Healthcare in Edgewood, Kentucky, with her obituary saying she passed away ‘peacefully surrounded by the people she loved’.
Away from the glare that accompanied her younger brother’s Hollywood career, Zeidler built a markedly private life.
A talented artist, she worked as an elementary school art teacher at Augusta Independent and had been a National Merit Scholar.
She belonged to a local book club and the Augusta Art Guild and had previously served as grand marshal of Augusta’s Annual White Christmas Parade.
Zeidler rarely stepped into Clooney’s celebrity world, although she traveled to Venice for his 2014 wedding to human rights lawyer Amal Clooney, now 48.
She once admitted that she had considered following her brother into acting but decided she lacked the resilience required for life in show business.
Zeidler said: “Yes, there is a part of me that would very much like to have become a famous actress or something like that. I enjoy acting and I was fairly okay at it, but I did not have a thick enough skin for it.”
Despite their dramatically different lives, the siblings remained in contact – although Zeidler revealed she deliberately did not store her famous brother’s telephone number.
She said: “I do not have his phone number because I wouldn’t want to have it in my phone and then lose my phone.
“He can phone me, and he does occasionally, but the email is more convenient for both of us.”