George Clooney is fifty and fabulous, but does he know it?

"I'm actually only 28 years old, so I'm actually not aging well at all," the actor joked to Us Weekly at the Ides of March premiere Tuesday in Beverly Hills.

"The grayer you get, the more [audiences] don't want to see you in front of the camera," the actor-director said. "That's the truth!"

The highlight of directing and costarring in the Ides of March? "You get to see me in a nice suit. That's important because I like to wear nice suits!" he quipped. "[Actually the] highlight of the film [is] watching Ryan Gosling's work from beginning to end. He's a wonderful actor."

So how did Clooney, who helped pick the cast, decide on the 30-year-old star of The Notebook to be his costar in the film? "He was the only guy I could get really," Clooney said playfully. "And he's cheap! He's got nothing to do. He was unemployed. He's just one of the best in the business, truly. And he's 30 years old — 25 — or 15? Whatever he is, he's just unbelievably talented."

But Stacy Keibler's new beau didn't only praise his costar. "What you don't know is that [Ryan] is much shorter in real life," he kidded. "When you see him — if you see him — he's wearing huge heels… like Louboutins!"

Tell Us: Do you think George Clooney is aging well?