George Clooney and Renee Zellweger may be stuck in the past. He's making movies about historical events and she's one of the go-to stars for costume dramas like Cold Mountain and Chicago. Leatherheads serves both stars' talents as Clooney directs and stars in a comedy about pre-professional football. Zellweger plays intrepid reporter Lexie Littleton trying to expose the truth about Dodge Connelly, (Clooney)'s star athlete Carter Rutherford (John Krasinski), who she believed was not a war hero as he claimed.

Not only did Clooney set Leatherheads in 1925, the year before professional football became regulated and commercial. He scripted and filmed it in the style of old Hollywood screwball comedies. The banter is fast and suggestive, with the actors channeling his favorite screen legends.

"We called it front foot acting," explained Clooney. "You’re almost answering just as if you couldn’t have heard the question. It has to be sort of that quick. The difference is you can’t do it exactly like Rosalind Russell. She was brilliant, but if you took that performance and put it into a modern film, even if was supposed to be an older film, it would just be like an impersonation."

That's where Zellweger's credibility in historical epics won her the job. "With someone like John or someone like Renee, they are actors who don’t feel contemporary which is important," continued Clooney. "A lot of actors just feel like it’s 2008 no matter what you do. We had the same problem with Good Night and Good Luck. You had to have actors who didn’t fill every [line] with 'Y’know,' that are good at being very crisp and clean and both of them are very crisp, clean actors."

Such a compliment made the actress blush. "I didn't think about what I looked like growing up at all, ever," she said. "I was taught to much later in life. I didn't think about what I looked like. It didn't matter. I was very busy living my life this way and I didn't think about it so much when I got here [to Hollywood] either. I knew that I didn't look like 'a movie star.' I know that I don't have those assets so to speak, but it didn't bother me too much because it didn't seem that it was going to help me with what it was that I was hoping to do."

Now that she has played many women of the past, Zellweger acknowledged that it is her rightful place. "Well, I enjoy it. I love it because I find in my personal experience that the further removed the character's reality is from my own, the more fun it is and the easier it is to dip within that alternate reality. I just really enjoy it. I love it. In fact, I'm so much more comfortable in a corset or the '20s sort of drop waist dresses and the way of delivering that dialogue than just being the girl who kind of looks like me and who might have the same clothes in her wardrobe as I do. I don't feel comfortable. I don't feel safe playing the girl who looks like me. There's not enough to hide behind."

Lexie actually served an important plot function in Clooney's script, but it certainly was not another comment on the media.

"I had already done a film about that," he joked. "This one was more about the idea that I wanted to give John Krasinki’s character a secret. In the original draft of the film, John’s character and Lexi were boyfriend and girlfriend in college and they graduated together. What happened was she wasn’t active. She had nothing to do and there was nothing to get, [so I got the idea of making her a reporter"].

Since a love triangle ensues between the veteran player, the rookie star and the reporter, Clooney had to humbly take his own age into consideration too. "I was now too old to be stealing the college girl. Unfortunately, that happened."

The idea of a female journalist in 1925 may be more of a flight of fancy on Clooney's part. "Obviously, there weren’t women sportswriters in 1925 and they are fighting to do it even now, so we felt like that was a great ballsy thing to be. But it wasn’t a comment on the press on that one. I was just having fun."

Ever idealistic, Zellweger hoped that there were really Lexies in the '20s. "Oh no, I'm sure she existed. Absolutely. Just fewer opportunities, I suppose, to express herself, and for us to see her."

As a celebrity, dealing with the media has made Zellweger long for a time when the Lexies of the world strove to do the right thing. "I don't know that I'd like her job very much. I understand the responsibility that journalists have to reporting the truth, and I appreciate that. I mean, we're in an interesting crossroads with that right now, because I find that there's not so much accountability any more, and that you don't necessarily have to report the truth, you just need to be first. News has become a commodity, and that's frightening to me, because I think there's a better way to make money. But yeah, I don't know that I'd be comfortable with having that much responsibility in terms of shaping the course of another person's life. Especially if I knew that I could do damage to it."

Even being in public with normal citizens can be a chore for a megastar. "It's the hardest part of my job," she said. "I want to have real conversations and I want to be a fly on a wall in a room. I want to be able to watch and peoplewatch, and just have different sort of sociological experiences that are becoming rarer and rarer. I know it sounds so crazy, but boy, I cherish it when somebody's mean because they're just having a bad day, and they don't recognize that you know Tom Cruise and so they alter their behavior in some way. I love it! I love it when the stewardess is just nasty! I do. It's fantastic. And I just shrink when she comes back and apologizes because she didn't realize [it was me.] Then it's just yucky, because then you're sitting there and you're thinking, 'No, no, no. I liked you before, a lot, because I can respect that you're just having a bad day.' Now it's like the conditional kind of thing. 'Oh, now you're going to be nice? Because now it matters that you're nice, where before it didn't?'"

Leatherheads is the third time that Clooney has directed a movie in which he has starred. However, he is the lead in Leatherheads, not just some cameo to help boost the film's marketability.

"The truth is, I did it because this was a part that for a long, long, long time I wanted to play and I thought I was the right guy to play it. I also thought, 'I’m 46. If I don’t do it now, I’m done. This is it. This is my last shot at it.' So I was sort of stuck in this world where I was going to direct it and I was going to play the lead. What I hadn’t really paid attention to was that I was also going to play football and it hurt."

Rolling around in thedirt truly made Clooney feel his age. "The first day I got hit by some 21-year-old who knocked me on my ass and I was like, 'Okay, I’m in trouble because I have four more months of this.' I would never, by design, do a film that I would play the lead in ever again. It was one of those things where it all came together very quickly. But, it was a dumb move in some ways. It was a little too much to take on."

Keeping his irreverent sense of humor in the midst of physical injuries, Clooney got his revenge on his young hotshot costars.

"They were supposed to be wrapped about two days earlier, and I went to them and I said, 'Listen, we have to do a pick up shot out in the parking lot for the mud sequence. I know, it sucks, but we didn’t get a close up when you guys are all covered with mud and you stand up and you look back.' So, I keep them for two days. I bring them out to the set the day before, it’s about an hour drive. I leave them in the trailer and I’m like, 'Send them home. Sorry guys, we didn’t get to you today' just so they would know that we were really shooting. I set up a giant green screen on the roof of this parking lot, got a big tub of mud, had them all of them laying in the mud, rolling around. The whole crew is in on it. They are wallowing around in mud. I made them rehearse and they had to lay on the ground, stand up in front of the green screen and look sad. We set it up for about a half hour, spraying them down, covering them with more mud. Then finally, I stand next to the camera and they are doing 'Rolling, speed and… you know, we really don’t need this shot.' It was freezing cold and they were covered in mud. It was pretty great actually. It was worth paying them for an extra week just to keep them there."

While Clooney led the boys club, Zellweger felt right at home on the sidelines. "I had a great time, are you kidding me? Those fellas are fantastic. And yeah, sure, it was a boys' club. It really was. Most of this group worked together for years and years and years, and he's had the same friends for over 20 years, at least. And so it was really nice to be a part of that big, extended family. I had a great time at work. Who are we kidding?"

Still politically minded, Clooney may return to the "issues" arena with his next directorial project. "There is a play that is about to get made in New York that we are working on a screenplay of, called Farragut North. It’s really interesting. It may be the next one, but it would be next year. It’s actually interesting though. It’s about running for president. This was a play that was coming out long before people were talking about the election. It’s not the same thing. It’s not about Barack and Hillary and all that or Elliot Spitzer."

This time, however, Clooney would not star. "I think there are a lot better actors for that then me."