If you see crew member Shannon Myers around the garage this weekend, you may want to stop him for an autograph; he's gone Hollywood.

As if NASCAR wasn't Hollywood enough these days, the tire changer went out and landed himself a pertinent part in George Clooney's new football flick, Leatherheads.

Myers is now on a first-name basis with "George" and shared a muddy football field with the world's sexiest star for more than five months.

"He's the nice person everyone says he is. He was just one of the guys on the field," Myers said of the film project where nearly 2,500 average Joe citizens mixed with pseudo athletes and retirees all tried out to fit the part of football players.

There wasn't much acting involved for the 34-year-old Myers as the North Carolina native played wide receiver in college and then was selected in the 1995 NFL Draft.

Myers had spent most of his adult life getting beat and banged on the football field.

Starting with the Miami Dolphins as Don Shula's last draft pick, Myers said, he was selected to be a wide receiver but before the season began he endured a major kidney injury during training camp.

George Clooney

Shooting the quintessential movie-ending football scene with Clooney, the championship game lasting five days, was Myers' proudest moment.

"We usually finished the day with a bomb so I dove out for the pass, pulled it in and if you can imagine I was parallel with the ground and I landed hard and my elbow went into my gut," Myers said of the injury he would later learn lacerated his kidney.

He managed to finish out the practice, short of breath and in a tremendous amount of pain. After four rounds of surgery, 20 percent of the damaged kidney was removed.

As a receiver with little experience under his belt and now a liability with his injury, Myers was no longer able to play for the Dolphins.

He went back to college at Lenoir-Rhyne College in Hickory, N.C., and graduated in 1997. But still his heart longed for the field so he joined the Canadian Football League for two years and bettered his game enough to get a call from the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

After a short-lived stay, Myers was then traded to the Oakland Raiders, where he blew out his knee and required surgery. A call from the New York Jets landed him overseas playing for NFL Europe's Rhein Fire in Germany.

By this time, Myers was drained. He realized his priorities were changing. "Spitting on his injuries" and moving on was no longer getting the job done.

In 2001 in Barcelona, he played his last game and hung up his cleats.

Back home in North Carolina he visited an orthopedic surgeon, a college friend who suggested Myers look into being a NASCAR crewman. The teams were looking for professional athletes. Myers said he chuckled at the idea of working in NASCAR and was uncertain the competition level would rival anything he experienced in the NFL or college.

"I really laughed it off," he recalled. "It made me think of the chicken bone section and beer drinking."

Turns out, Myers couldn't have been more wrong and is more or less working as a professional athlete for a second time around. The only difference: He tries to limit the beating and the banging to the car, not his body.

Myers' football coach at North Rowan High School was Mark Mauldin, now the pit crew coach for Hendrick Motorsports. He introduced Myers to NASCAR, and Myers then went to work for Petty Enterprises pitting for Buckshot Jones and later working his way up to Kyle Petty's machine.

He then moved to Dale Earnhardt Inc. and changed tires for Dale Earnhardt Jr.

Today, he works for BAM Racing changing tires in the Sprint Cup Series, as well as for Michael Waltrip and Kevin Harvick in the Nationwide Series.

Even more, he's enjoying his five minutes of big-screen fame as the No. 26 football player seen at least three times in the movie Leatherheads.

The movie is a romantic comedy set during professional football's formative years in 1925. The uniforms depicted a time where padding was nil and the so-called helmets were made of padded leather or mole skin as opposed to today's air cushion system, polymer-type models.

T.J. Troup, a writer and football historian, was hired by Clooney's production company as a consultant in order to maintain authenticity throughout the film. He said the helmets were made to look relevant to the decade by being placed in a dryer with a box of golf balls on a high setting.

"You swore it was straight from 1925," Troup said.

As a former college and high school football coach, he connected with Myers almost immediately. And that's why he called for Myers to play in the championship game.

"I needed my best guys who had extensive experience," Troup said.

Myers was elated and spent long days in his mud-covered costume and eventually bought a Wal-Mart poncho to wear under his uniform to avoid chaffing from cold, wet and gritty mud.

Shooting the quintessential movie-ending football scene with Clooney, the championship game lasting five days, was Myers' proudest moment.

Myers recalled a moment of comic relief on the field.

Everyone was covered with mud and unrecognizable, which Clooney, also director of the film, contended was good for what he was trying to accomplish. He was hopping fancy camera angles and mud rendered his co-star indistinguishable; home viewers couldn't tell the difference between Clooney and co-star John Krasinski.

"But I piped up and said, 'But [Krasinski] is a whole lot sexier than you and they'll know the difference,'" Myers said. "He fired right back at me and said, 'He may be but I'm a rich -------.' I about fell over. I said, 'You've got that right, now how about adopting me.'"

The movie gave Myers a unique opportunity to say goodbye to the game he loves and embrace new challenges that are ahead.

"I was emotional," he said. "It brought up old memories, gave me a real happy feeling to lace up the cleats again and smell the grass."