Clooney: 'This Has Been The Worst Year Of My Life'

[George Clooney](https://www.contactmusic.com/george-clooney) has declared the past 12 months to be the worst year of his life, after dealing with death, depression and health problems.

Among his long list of woes, the 44-year-old actor had to deal with painful spinal damage after gaining a huge amount of weight for his role in his latest movie SYRIANA.

He says, "When I started the movie I had gone through a series of sort of unhappy times. Some bad things had happened in my life and it's also depressing to put on that much weight that quickly. I did it in 30 days.

"So I was really sort of reflecting what I was going through in a way. It wasn't a lot of acting, it was just sort of me playing a part I wasn't very happy in and I wasn't very happy at the time either.

"On my way to Morocco (where Syriana was filmed), leaving my house, there was a rattlesnake wrapped around my dog with its teeth in the back of his head. I had to get a baseball bat and beat the snake until it let go, but it killed the dog. That was the last thing the dog saw, me beating a snake with a bat.

"It was just one thing after another too. My brother-in-law, who was 46 years old, stood up and had a heart attack and died.

"My dad was running for an election that he lost in the middle of this shoot and stuff like that. So it felt like I was having a bad year."