A driven George Clooney tells Marianne Gray how important it is not to get typecast
George Clooney arrived on British screens more or less a fully formed star. He had spent years trapped in American sitcom hell and by the time we got him he was in his mid-thirties playing the debonair Dr Doug Ross in the hit series ER.
We never saw him as a young hopeful in embarrassments like The Return of the Killer Tomatoes or Murder, She Wrote, a TV show he describes as a junkyard for actors who become skeletons of themselves. He was delivered to us as Gorgeous George, the actor who could do no wrong.
‘Listen,’ Clooney comments amiably, when I meet him just before Christmas, ‘I was unfamous for a very long time and I’m enjoying being where I am now. I know that eventually my career will plummet — all careers do — so I’m going to savour this while it’s going strong. I’ve still got good screen hair so I must make the most of it before it falls out! A few years from now I’ll probably be the centre box of some TV trivia question show.’
Unlikely.
Clooney, 50 next year, has been in three ‘hot’ films released here in the past four months — voicing the animated film version of Roald Dahl’s book Fantastic Mr Fox, the far-fetched comedy based on Jon Ronson’s book The Men Who Stare at Goats, which Clooney’s company Smokehouse Productions produced, and this month Up in the Air, a light comedy about a dark subject in which he plays an admirable antihero, Ryan Bingham, a firer-for-hire, flown in by spineless managers to execute their lay-offs and redundancies for them.
‘He’s a corporate hatchet man who avoids emotional ties by travelling constantly and feeding his obsession with frequent-flier miles,’ says Clooney of his role, written for him by Jason Reitman (Juno) and playing opposite Vera Farmiga (The Departed) and newcomer Anna Kendrick.
It could hardly be more timely to have a main character who fires people for a living. ‘I connected with the story for obvious reasons. In an industry where 95 per cent of people are out of work or make below the poverty level, I feel deeply fortunate to be working and not redundant…’ and, undoubtedly, also to have a vast number of frequent-flier miles.
Clooney is wry, clever and cool. The times I have met him he has been knee-bucklingly charming, seemingly the consummate gentleman as well as a good actor and an old-fashioned matinee idol.
Over the past few years he’s also become a respected and candid political activist, doing his part for poverty relief in Africa. In 2008 he was one of eight individuals chosen by the UN to act as an advocate on its behalf in its peacekeeping efforts. ‘If you are in a privileged position, as I am, and are able to use your status to raise support, I personally feel you should,’ he told me. ‘However, if you jump into politics you have to be ready to take a hit because that is going to happen. You’d better know your stuff and know it better than the others. You have to pick your fights and go after them, and then it seems like you can help get things done.
‘My father and I went to Darfur and made a documentary about what’s happening there and spoke at the UN about it. It’s important if you can make a difference, to try to make it.’
Clooney was born in Kentucky into an Irish Catholic family. He is the son of a former beauty queen and TV anchorman and gameshow host Nick Clooney, and nephew of singer Rosemary Clooney. He says he turned to acting when he didn’t make it into the Cincinnati Reds baseball team in 1977.
‘My cousin, the actor Miguel Ferrer, was working on a film in Kentucky and I’d rented my car to them for 50 bucks a day. Then they gave me a part as an extra and when Miguel said, “Come to LA and be an actor,” it seemed the right thing to do. I’d just spent the summer cutting tobacco, which is a miserable job, and Hollywood sounded good.’ Clooney smiles at me with a wonderful goofy grin.
Getting there was easy, making it was much harder. A late developer, he has made up for it since, acting, directing, producing and writing more than 30 films. He now has shedloads of awards, including an Oscar for Syriana (2006), and a couple of years ago the French gave him a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et Lettres. Tiens!
‘In this business it’s important not to get typecast,’ he says. ‘After I’d done a few big “issue” films like Good Night, and Good Luck and Syriana, every film I got sent was in the same vein, heavy-duty political. It’s also important that I work in comedies, like Up in the Air and Burn After Reading, my third comedy with the Coen Brothers, or films very far removed from political issues, like the Ocean’s Eleven films.
‘I am really driven with roles. I read a script more or less every day. Now I only make movies of which I am going to be proud. It’s daft to make films you know you are not going to like. It’s different if you need the money. Luckily, I’ve done perfectly well on films like the Ocean’s Elevens. Don’t worry about me!
‘I like to juggle. If you work in independently minded movies, you gamble on the film actually making money. If I want to get a film made, like The Good German, which didn’t make any money, and Good Night, and Good Luck or Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, the first film I directed, I do it for free and in that sense I’m the film’s bodyguard. I love what I do but what I’ve learnt in this industry is that you cannot have a bad day. You have to stay on the ball 24/12. No slacking. I’m very bad at doing nothing.’ Clearly no time for a private life. Clooney, who was married briefly to the actress Talia Balsam 15 years ago, remains the most eligible of bachelors. When asked at a press conference during the London Film Festival if he ever felt ‘broody’, with speedy élan he smartly replied he hadn’t heard the word ‘broody’ before. Once the meaning had been explained, he laughed and said that if he felt broody he’d adopt some of Brad Pitt’s kids!
So where to now for George Timothy Clooney? He’s currently shooting a thriller called The American in Italy, where he has a luxurious 18th-century villa on the shores of Lake Como (he also has a Tudor mansion in Los Angeles) and has eight films listed ‘in development’. ‘I would love to branch out and do some European films,’ he reflects, ‘but I’d have to learn how to speak another language. In Kentucky, where I come from, English was a foreign language for us and I’m still working on that!’
Up in the Air is released on 15 January.
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