George Clooney on Being Hit by a Car at 70mph: I Split My Helmet in Half

Now that he’s made peace with never riding again, Clooney can talk about the accident and how close he came to dying. In his own words, he used up all his 9 lives when he walked away on his feet, without considerable injury, from a crash that occurred at 70 mph and sent him flying through the air after hitting a car windshield with his head.

So no wonder he thought he’d die when he finally landed on the tarmac and could see the broken windshield, as he tells The Hollywood Reporter’s First Look. That’s at the 31-minute mark in the video available at the bottom of the page.

“I hit him at 70 miles per hour, so it was bad,” he says. “I split my helmet in half. It knocked me out of my shoes, it hit hard. It was bad and I was waiting for the switch to turn off because I broke his windshield with my head. I thought, ‘Okay, well, that’s my neck.’”

Grant Heslov, fellow producer on the series and a good friend and fellow rider, was among the first on the scene. He cradled Clooney until paramedics arrived and was so scared himself that he, too, swore off bikes for the rest of his life.

“It got both Grant and I – after 40 years of riding together – off of motorcycles for good,” Clooney says.

Luckily for the actor, he didn’t suffer significant injuries. He was back at work four days later, but the possibility of a far worse condition was enough to get him to hang up his biking gear for good.

After the crash, which saw a Mercedes-Benz E-Class Wagon cut into Clooney’s lane, sending him flying through the air after he hit the windshield with his head, police confirmed the blame lay with the driver.