Sameera gets close to Clooney!

t’s not everyday that one can rub shoulders with a man who has been voted as the Sexiest Man Alive. Not once, but twice over. It was for real — Sameera Reddy’s rendezvous with a Hollywood hottie was as real as it could get.

It’s George Clooney we’re talking about. They two met by a stroke of luck at the Toronto Film Festival, and we caught up with Sameera, right after the event in lovely Canada for all the juicy details. We wanted her to croon to us about the Clooney effect. And she sang a delightful li’l song.

“When I landed in Toronto, I thought I would be jet-lagged, but the energy in Toronto is so high that it lifted my spirits. And by evening, I was flying high. I went for the premiere of George Clooney’s movie Michael Clayton and for the gala after that. I was standing with Shekhar Kapur and Clive Owen (he starred in Kapur’s Elizabeth); that’s when I was introduced to Clooney. I said ‘Hi! I’m Sameera Reddy, from India’. And he replied, “Yes, I know. And congrats you have two films at the festival, it’s great.”

I guess someone mentioned my name to him when I walked in, dressed in a sari — at my traditional best — so presumably, he was sure I was the same Indian actress he had just seen. It felt like eternity, and I was speechless.

He said that he loves Bollywood, and someday he would love to be a part of our movies. He is doing some fabulous charity work and we briefly spoke about how we could reach out to India. It’s so amazing to meet an actor with such a sense of awareness,” says Sameera, pretty much smitten (understandably so) by Clooney’s charm.

Sexy Sam’s brush with Hollywood doesn’t end here. She got a chance to hobnob with Don Cheadle, Woody Harrelson and Geoffrey Rush, too. “It was an awesome experience. But I’m here to promote Mira Nair’s Four Views on AIDS in India, and Buddhadeb Dasgupta’s Voyeurs. People want to know so much about Indian movies here, it’s unbelievable. I wish I could stay back and watch some brilliant movies from around the world here. Maybe next time. The George Clooney experience is enough to see me through till next year,” says the gushing gal. And ‘by George’, dare we say, she’s probably right.