George Clooney’s co-stars Vera Farmiga and Anna Kendrick dish the dirt on working with the sexy leading man. Steve Pratt reports.

THERE was a third person involved in Vera Farmiga’s relationship with George Clooney on the set of satirical comedy Up In The Air. As a new mother, she was breastfeeding son Fynn between her kissing scenes with Gorgeous George.

“We’d do it and then I’d say ‘okay, George, now I’ve got to go breastfeed’,” she says.

“Then I’d come back and be trying to find sort of clever positions to hide the wet spots on my silk blouse.”

Clooney seems to have met his match with both his leading ladies. The other, Anna Kendrick, admits she made fun of him a lot more than she ever realised she would.

“Like he’d call me short and I’d call him old. If you’d told me before I did the film that I’d be making fun of George Clooney, I wouldn’t have believed you.”

Farmiga also reveals that she turned down the chance to do a nude scene with Clooney. There’s a shot of her character lying on a bed with her bare bottom towards the camera, while a shirtless Clooney stretches out on the floor beside her. But it wasn’t Farmiga, who’d given birth to her son only weeks before..

“I had six pounds more on my behind. I did attempt to do the nude scene but I think my bottom had become too large. I got to help choose my body double and I thought Jason (Reitman, director) did a good job in selecting someone who was pretty accurate.”

The New Jersey-born actress plays confident businesswoman Alex, who not only seduces ommitmentphobe Ryan Bingham (Clooney), but plays him at his own game.

“It was challenging to play a woman who is very much like a man,” she admits.

“Often at times when a woman behaves in this way, it can be misinterpreted. I appreciated that equal balance of power.

“I also loved walking this tightrope of wanton unapologetic sexuality and femininity. I thought that was a challenge and a treat to tackle. It was difficult for me, and it was a fine line to tread, to have this softness and in the end, she takes control of her sexuality. I really liked the male perspective on the heartbreak.”

She has only praise for her Clooney. “He’s a dreamboat.

He’ll make anybody weak in the knees – male or female,”

she says. “George was exactly the partner I needed because I have never felt as insecure as I did coming into this role.

I had just given birth to my first child two weeks before my first costume fitting, I really needed an ally and he was simply wonderful.

“His sense of humour is sincerely the most attractive thing about him. It’s just jokes, nothing but laughter and giggles. He’s the consummate gentleman, extremely kind and loving.”

Her co-star, 24-year-old Anna Kendrick, doesn’t bed Clooney’s character but does get to reprimand him as the colleague who aims to bring a halt to his jet-setting ways with her cost-cutting measures.

“I’m normally so timid in real life that I get excited by my character getting to tell people off. Telling someone like George off was pretty awesome,” she says.

Her performance has already won her awards nominations, including a Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild for best supporting actress. That means an Oscar nomination isn’t out of the question.

“I think surreal is absolutely the right word. It’s very strange for me to sit in my filthy, unwashed Prius, which I’ve had since I was 18, or in my room with my pile of laundry, and feel like there are people talking about Oscar buzz,” she says.

Reitman wrote the role especially for Kendrick, who appears in the Twilight film series as Bella’s classmate Jessica Stanley. “This script is so beautiful and the most incredible thing about it is this girl Natalie is this character who, throughout the whole entire film, never has a romantic interest. It’s a rare thing, this girl who’s so intelligent and complicated and her world doesn’t revolve around a romantic storyline.

You don’t read scripts like that.” The Portland-born actress reveals she was “intimidated” at the prospect of filming the scenes with Clooney. “I didn’t really assume that George was doing it for real, I thought it was too good to be true, to be working on this script and working with George Clooney,” she recalls.

“I was so terrified, but he goes so out of his way to make people feel comfortable because people tend to get uncomfortable around him – he is George Clooney. But he’s amazing. He just has this incredible skill for making you feel like he’s just the guy you get to work with every day.”

■ Up In The Air (15) opens in cinemas tomorrow