George Clooney is a two-time Sexiest Man Alive. He’s one of the biggest movie stars on the planet. He co-founded a tequila company that sold for a billion dollars. And yet, not every woman who crossed his path was impressed. In fact, a few of them were downright turned off by the idea of dating him.
The most recent and arguably funniest example comes from Sara Foster, the actress, producer, and daughter of music mogul David Foster. On a January 2026 episode of her podcast, she casually dropped the story of the time Cindy Crawford and Rande Gerber tried to set her up with Clooney. It did not go well. And her story is just one in a surprisingly long list of women in Hollywood who looked at George Clooney and said, “No thanks.”
Sara Foster Called Her Clooney Date a “Hard No”
Here’s the setup. About 30 years ago, when Sara Foster was roughly 24 years old, her friends Cindy Crawford and Rande Gerber decided to play matchmaker. They arranged a double date: the four of them sitting down together, with the not-so-subtle goal of pairing Sara with George Clooney. It was a blind date, more or less, and Sara was not into it from the jump.
“Rande and Cindy tried to set me up with him, like, when I was 24 maybe? And the four of us met, and it was just such a hard no,” Foster said on The World’s First Podcast, which she co-hosts with her sister Erin Foster (the creator of the Netflix hit Nobody Wants This).
The main issue? The age gap. Clooney is 20 years older than Sara. She was 24 at the time, and to her, Clooney felt ancient. She described him as feeling like “a grandpa.” She told Erin she has never understood the appeal of a 19-year-old being attracted to a 40-year-old, calling it “so weird.” She was actually offended that Crawford and Gerber thought the pairing was a good idea.
But the awkwardness didn’t stop there.
She Started Crying About Her Ex in Front of Clooney
On top of her total lack of interest, Sara was also a mess emotionally. She was going through a painful breakup at the time, and the sadness followed her right to the dinner table. She described the entire evening as “depressing” and recalled sitting there thinking, “I’m gonna die.”
Then she started crying. About her ex. In front of George Clooney, Cindy Crawford, and Rande Gerber. Just picture that scene for a second. One of the most famous actors in the world is sitting across from you on a setup, and you’re sobbing over the guy who just dumped you.
“So I think he was like, ‘This chick’s not okay,'” Sara joked on the podcast. She was quick to add that she doesn’t think Clooney was all that interested either, suggesting the whole thing was Crawford and Gerber’s idea rather than something Clooney pursued.
Erin Foster teased her sister about it, telling her she was probably “the only woman on the planet” who would be bummed out by a date with “the heartthrob of America.” Fair point.
The Story Came Out Because of the Golden Globes
The Foster sisters didn’t just randomly bring up the Clooney story. They were recapping their night at the 2026 Golden Globe Awards, where Nobody Wants This (starring Kristen Bell and Adam Brody) was nominated for three awards. They lost in all three categories, which probably stung a little.
Clooney was also at the Globes that night, nominated for his Netflix film Jay Kelly and seated alongside his wife Amal. So the sisters were in the same room as the guy Sara had blown off decades earlier. That’s what prompted the trip down memory lane.
Sara, now 44, eventually moved on from that tearful blind date and married former professional tennis player Tommy Haas in 2006. They were together for 19 years and share two daughters, Valentina and Josephine. News of their split broke in August 2024. Clooney, of course, married international human rights lawyer Amal Alamuddin in 2014 and they have twins, Alexander and Ella, born in 2017.
Sara Foster Grew Up Skeptical of Marriage Itself
There’s an interesting layer to Sara’s story that goes beyond one bad blind date. Her father, legendary music producer David Foster, has been married five times. Growing up watching that shaped her entire view of commitment. In a 2023 podcast appearance, Sara admitted she didn’t grow up respecting marriage.
“Looking back, I guess I didn’t grow up respecting marriage. I grew up thinking it doesn’t mean anything, you just walk away,” she said. That’s a pretty candid thing to say publicly, and it adds context to why a setup with Hollywood’s most famous bachelor at the time didn’t exactly make her heart flutter. She wasn’t just unimpressed by Clooney specifically. She was skeptical of the whole romantic framework.
Julianna Margulies Made a Deliberate Choice Not to Date Clooney
Sara Foster’s story is funny because of how blunt she is about it. But the more interesting case of a woman choosing not to date Clooney might be Julianna Margulies. Unlike Sara, Margulies actually had a real crush on the guy. She just chose not to act on it.
Margulies played trauma nurse Carol Hathaway on ER from 1994 to 2000, opposite Clooney’s Dr. Doug Ross. The two had genuine offscreen chemistry. Margulies has been open about that. But they both made a conscious decision to keep things platonic.
Why? Because they’d seen what happens when costars get together. Clooney himself had a rule about it, and he used a very specific cautionary tale to explain his thinking. He would bring up the show Moonlighting, where Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd got romantically involved and then reportedly couldn’t stand each other afterward. “You don’t s**t where you eat,” Clooney would say. Blunt, but effective.
Margulies echoed that logic on Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcast. She said a fling with Clooney might have been fun “until I became an adult,” but that eventually she “would have wanted him to show up.” Translation: she knew Clooney’s pre-Amal reputation as a commitment-phobic bachelor, and she wasn’t interested in being another name on that list.
“You just want to have the crush keep going and going. And that’s what worked,” she said. And she was right. Their unrequited chemistry became one of the defining elements of ER’s golden era. Even years after the show ended, Margulies and Clooney still referred to each other as “Carol” and “Doug.”
In April 2026, Margulies honored Clooney at the Chaplin Award Gala in New York City. She ended her speech the way their correspondence has apparently always gone: signing off as “Carol” and addressing him as “Doug.” Thirty-two years of friendship, no romantic baggage. That’s the payoff of the choice she made.
Frances Fisher Thought Young Clooney Was “Goofy Looking”
Then there’s Frances Fisher, the Titanic actress who has been dogged for years by rumors that she dated Clooney in the 1990s. In a March 2026 podcast interview, she finally addressed it. Her answer? It never happened. They were photographed together once, standing next to each other at a pool hall, and people ran with it.
“We were at a pool hall or something like that and somebody took a picture of us standing next to each other because we were talking,” Fisher said. “We were friendly. We didn’t date.”
Fisher and Clooney go way back. They first met on the set of Roseanne. Clooney had a recurring role as a character named Brooker Books in seasons one and four, while Fisher appeared as a guest in season one. And here’s the kicker: Fisher admitted she didn’t think young Clooney would ever make it as an actor. She called him “goofy looking” and wasn’t impressed by his limited dialogue at the time. This is the same man who went on to be named People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive twice and TV Guide’s number one “Sexiest Star of All Time.”
Even Julia Roberts Gagged at the Idea
Perhaps the most famous example of a woman keeping Clooney firmly in the friend zone is Julia Roberts. The two have starred in six movies together over more than 20 years, including the entire Ocean’s Eleven series. They’re clearly close. Roberts is known as “Auntie JuJu” to Clooney’s twins and regularly visits the family at their home in Lake Como, Italy.
But when asked during the Ticket to Paradise press tour in 2022 whether they ever had a no-dating policy, Roberts laughed and said, “I don’t think we needed to state it.” Clooney jokingly suggested they “take this to a different level,” and Roberts literally gagged. Clooney’s response was perfect: “Well, you don’t have to react that bad! You know I was a two-time Sexiest Man Alive?”
Roberts described kissing Clooney for the film as “kind of ridiculous” and compared it to “kissing your best friend.” The explanation was pretty simple. One of them was always in a relationship. The timing was never right, and eventually, they became too close as friends for it to ever feel like anything else.
The Common Thread Here
What’s interesting about all of these stories is that none of these women are saying Clooney is a bad guy. Sara Foster was clear about that. Frances Fisher called him “friendly.” Margulies credits him with helping launch her career. Roberts considers him family. They all like George Clooney just fine. They just didn’t want to date him.
And honestly, that might be the most interesting thing about Clooney’s reputation. For decades, he was the textbook example of a Hollywood leading man, the guy every woman supposedly wanted. But the actual women in his orbit often saw something different. They saw the age gap, the bachelor lifestyle, or just a buddy. It took Amal Alamuddin, an international human rights lawyer with zero connection to Hollywood, to finally change his mind about marriage. And apparently, to find someone who actually wanted to date him back.
