George Clooney unplugged

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A sense of
injustice...
and
humour
“Awright, we have time for one more question” may not be the best line
to use while striding into a question-answer session but it does make the
journalists sit straighter and gather their wits when faced with the world’s
sexiest man, with estimated earnings of $25 million in 2007 in his roles as
actor, director, producer and screenwriter

text Shalini Seth

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Clooney at Dubai International Film Festival with

chairman Abdulhamid Juma (centre) and a guest

G eorge Clooney doesn’t seem to keep much

in the closet – dressed in plain black jeans
with a muck-coloured T-shirt, he’s at home
posing with the opulent Burj Al Arab in
the backdrop. Obviously, having lived down a rubber suit early
in his career, wardrobe ought not to be a concern. After all, it
was Clooney who prompted Men’s Style to run a column by
Each time he changes
a girlfriend, makes a
bet, rides a bike, wears a
GQ’s editor Dylan Jones titled ‘Don’t ask me what Clooney had
on’. Jones continued to say that he was so star-struck that all he
tuxedo, buys a car, takes
remembered was that Clooney “was wearing some kind of shirt
and a pair of dark trousers…”
a jet, or not, someone,
Hollywood’s heartthrob of the week seems to have spent many somewhere from the 2.6
evenings airing out anything that can be uncloseted by a roomful
of journalists anywhere from G-8 to GQ. As part of the Alpha billion strong audience
list of Hollywood, he would be recognised everywhere from LA
to Al Shahamah and beyond by the 2.6 billion strong audience of Hollywood movies will
of Hollywood worldwide. Broken down to basics, that simply
means that each time he changes a girlfriend, makes a bet, rides
have an opinion on it
a bike, wears a tuxedo, buys a car, takes a jet, or not, someone,
somewhere in one of the 200 countries that watch Hollywood’s
Academy Awards will have an opinion on it. With the aid of a
paparazzo or many.

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 Sharon Stone at DIFF
“I am a son of a newsman. I have no problems being
photographed. You can take photos of me any time you want,”
he says, which seems rather generous of him. This is the man
who is reported to have helped design and instal an egg-flinging
device in his Villa Oleandra at the Lake Como estate in Italy to
discourage intruders who crossed an infrared sensor.
Over a career that has spanned more than 20 years, although
Clooney hit the big leagues only about 10 years ago, he has
often gone on record for “taking hits” to not mess with freedom
of speech. “But I do have an issue with eight or nine guys on
bikes driving on the wrong side of the road, breaking every law
possible and chasing me. That’s dangerous for everyone around,”
he says, eliciting nods of understanding from the newsmen and
women, most dressed in echoes of black.
Given that 50 per cent of Hollywood’s audience is outside
American, the country’s celebrities do need to censor themselves
occasionally, especially given that the figure is set to rise to 80
per cent in the next 20 years, compared to the reverse ratio of its
nearest competitor. Even with a larger audience of three billion,
only 20 per cent of Indian cinema’s viewers are non-Indian.
Accordingly in Dubai the famous Clooney rapier wit is a little
toned down. “I have made too many bad films that can be used
Clooney with his girlfriend, Sarah Larson
to campaign against me,” he says, answering a question about
running for office – and everyone falls in love one more time.
Given that he’s asked the question more times than he is
voted the most handsome/ eligible/ popular/ powerful man, it
is not surprising that he delves into his past life for answers,
even confessing once: “Yes, I smoked grass. Yes, I had sex with
more than one person. In the US, they make a big deal out of
everything as soon as you run for higher office.” Keeping away
from drugs and women, here, in our part of the world, he will
only talk about movies.
In Hollywood, which perhaps does more to carry the American
world view to the world than George W Bush, Clooney is not
content to be outside the circle of power. When his father, Nick
Clooney, ran for Congress as Democrat in their hometown of
Kentucky in 2004, and lost, the son rallied support and funding
from a number of Hollywood pals, including Meg Ryan, Salma
Hayek, Renee Zellweger and Steven Spielberg. In a note to
potential donors, he promised to repay support by washing cars
and armouring tyres dressed in a toga. It worked. He collected
up to $600,000 for his father’s campaign. While the son did not
actively campaign, the Clooneys matched each other line for
line, movies and columns superimposed on campaign speeches >
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The Clooney climb
George Clooney was born in Lexington, Kentucky, as son of Nick Clooney,
a TV newscaster of many years.
In 1994, Clooney was still a 33-year-old journeyman TV actor, having
spent a decade doing various TV shows including ‘Roseanne’, ‘The Facts
of Life’ and ‘Sisters’. In ‘ER’ he played a doctor – the sexy Ben Casey
– opposite Anthony Edwards’ stolid Dr Kildare.
He continued television while he dabbled in movies, starting with director
Robert Rodriguez’s 1996 vampire slash-fest ‘From Dusk to Dawn’, which
grossed $26 million.
Clooney moved into mainstream romantic comedy opposite Michelle
Pfeiffer in the mildly successful ‘One Fine Day’, which grossed $46 million.
He donned latex in Warner Bros’ fourth Batman film, ‘Batman & Robin’, in
1997, as the least successful Batman, with a $107 million gross. Stardom
continued to elude him.
His 1997 DreamWorks thriller, ‘The Peacemaker’, opened to $12.3
million; in 1998, director Steven Soderbergh’s ‘Out of Sight’ debuted
to $12 million. And David O Russell’s edgy ‘Three Kings’ scored a $15.8
million weekend.
Reports say that when Mel Gibson commanded as much as $25 million
per film, Clooney agreed to take $5 million on ‘Three Kings’; successfully
underbid Nicholas Cage to win ‘Perfect Storm’ for an $8 million salary;
and cut his fee even further to appear in the Coen Brothers’ Depression-
era comedy ‘Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?’
In 2001, for Warner’s all-star remake of the Rat Pack classic ‘Ocean’s
Eleven’, he immediately offered to work wholesale, a move that reportedly
had the studio telling the other prospective stars – Julia Roberts, Brad Pitt
and Bruce Willis – that they would have to take a pay cut too. To this
day, it remains Clooney’s most commercially successful movie, earning
approximately $444 million worldwide. The film spawned two sequels,
‘Ocean’s Twelve’ in 2004 and ‘Ocean’s Thirteen’ in 2007.
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In 2001, Clooney founded the production studio Section Eight Productions
with Steven Soderbergh.
He made his directorial debut in the 2002 film ‘Confessions of a Dangerous
Mind’, an adaptation of the autobiography of TV producer Chuck Barris.
In 2005, Clooney starred in ‘Syriana’, which was based loosely on former
Central Intelligence Agency operative Robert Baer and his memoirs of
being an agent in the Middle East. The same year he directed, produced
and starred in ‘Good Night, And Good Luck’, a film about 1950s
television journalist Edward R Murrow’s famous war of words with
Senator Joseph McCarthy.
In 2006, Clooney was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director
and Best Original Screenplay for ‘Good Night, And Good Luck’, as well as
Best Supporting Actor for ‘Syriana’, winning for the latter.
More recently, he appeared in ‘The Good German’, a film noire, directed
by Soderbergh and set in post-World War II Germany.
“The funny part of being an actor in a position where you can get them
to make movies… the simple truth is that there aren’t that many good
scripts. Maybe I will do a musical next,” he says.
In July 2005, news reports said that Clooney would be working with Cindy
Crawford’s husband Rande Gerber to design and build a new casino hotel
in Las Vegas. On August 29 the same year, Clooney officially announced
his involvement with the Las Ramblas Resort project. However, the project
never came to fruition, and the property on which the resort was to be
built was sold in June 2006.
Clooney has been voted some superlative or the other at least seven times,
including the sexiest man alive, the best dressed male television star and
one of the 50 most beautiful people in the world.
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“I am a son of a newsman. I have no problems being photographed”

that started with: “We sent 300,000 of our best and brightest on
a snipe hunt…”
Clooney’s political leanings are more Hollywood than
hometown (which is so staunchly Republican that Rudy Giuliani
is not considered conservative enough). Clooney belongs to
the political school of thought initiated by Sean Penn, Susan
Sarandon and Alec Baldwin. The school is led by Bono, the U2
front man whose activism on behalf of African nations has led to
meetings with world leaders such as Bush, US Treasury Secretary
Paul H O’Neill and Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin. The
Nobel Peace Prize nominee, named by Time magazine in 2005
as its Person of the Year, is said to be instrumental in the G-8’s
decision to forgive more than $40 billion in debt owed by 18
countries, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa.
Clooney has adopted Darfur, Sudan, as his cause. In April
2006, he headlined a ‘Save Darfur’ rally in Washington, DC,
shortly after he returned from a trip there. His celebrity clout
earned him a spot alongside Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel before
the United Nations Security Council that September.
Sean Penn is vociferous in his campaign against the war in
Iraq. The Oscar winner shelled out $56,000 in 2002 for a full-
page ad in the Washington Post deriding Bush’s policies in Iraq.
For a time, it seems as if everything Clooney touched was is
about a cause. He does independent films because “they need
to be made”, producing movies such as ‘Syriana’, ‘Good Night,
And Good Luck’. He was in Dubai to promote ‘Michael Clayton’
because “you have to fight to make sure that the film does well so
you can make more of them”. He believes in the writers’ strike
This is the man who is
reported to have helped
design and instal an
egg-flinging device in
his Villa Oleandra in
Italy to discourage
intruders who crossed an
infrared sensor
because he is “a union man”, belonging to five of them himself.
And he believes being a celebrity is about having a conscience.
Together with the celebrity lobby of Angelina Jolie, Bob
Geldof and Brad Pitt, he has been active in campaigning for the
Sudanese Government to stop the genocide in Darfur. Plus, as
part of his contract with Omega watches, he’s working with them
on the development of a fuel cell, not to mention presenting
himself as the pin-up boy for eco-friendly electric cars, being one
of the first 100 owners of the Telsa.
In Dubai, Clooney is eager to talk about Iraq (“You can’t
beat your enemy through wars; instead you create an entire >

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generation of revenge-seeking people…”); and to thank the

Dubai Government for letting him shoot ‘Syriana’ (“a film that
was asking a lot of tough questions”) in this country. Clooney
says he was one of the first to campaign against the Iraq war,
and be called a traitor on the cover of a magazine. Like a true
lobbyist, it is obvious that he will not let anyone forget that in
a hurry.
“If you’re going to be famous and have cameras follow you
around, you might as well go where the cameras will do some
good,” he says, explaining why he puts his weight behind Darfur,
neatly sidestepping a question about UAE and human rights.
“Sitting in front of the mike, I have to be singular-minded about
what I am informed about and can talk about. My job isn’t to
change things, it’s not to create policy, but to shine a light on
good or bad policy and try to help the policy-makers make
changes,” he says.
But, as someone said, if George Clooney did not exist,
Hollywood would have invented him. While for good friends
Jolie and Pitt celebrity activism can be extremely personal, like
adopting a baby or two, Clooney believes in keeping personal
life just that – personal. He admits that Michelle Pfeiffer and
Nicole Kidman bet $10,000 each that he would be a father
before he turned 40. They were both wrong, and each sent him
a cheque. He returned the money. While he has confirmed that
he told them to give it to charity, word has it that he bet double
or nothing that he won’t have kids by age 50.
On screen, Clooney has made it by playing loveable rogues, at
least in movies that he paid to do, such as ‘Intolerable Cruelty’.
There are others that he does for a fee of a dollar each, such as
‘The Good German’ and ‘Good Night, And Good Luck’.

SALARY SEE-SAW
The Good German, 2007: $1m
Ocean’s Thirteen, 2007: $15m
Syriana, 2005: $350,000
Good Night, And Good Luck, 2005: $1m
Intolerable Cruelty, 2003: $15m
Ocean’s Eleven, 2001: $20m
The Perfect Storm, 2000: $8m
O Brother, Where Art Thou?, 2000: $1m
Three Kings, 1999: $5m
Out of Sight, 1998: $10m
The Peacemaker, 1997: $3m
Batman & Robin, 1997: $10m
One Fine Day, 1996: $3m
From Dusk Till Dawn, 1996: $250,000

Clooney has made it by playing loveable rogues

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He thanks the teleserial ER for making him what he is, stands
by bad choices in movies (“People asked me why I did ‘Batman
and Robin’, but it was a great break for me”), and jokes when
a journalist fumbles on a question: “I am confused about the
question. I am also slightly deaf.”
Like his on-screen characters, his righteous indignation off
the screen has tinges of roguishness, sometimes more than a
tinge. He is not above making politically incorrect jokes about
people whose politics he does not agree with. He once said
Charlton Heston “announced again today that he is suffering
from Alzheimer’s”, justifying the comment because the former
actor headed the National Rifle Association, a body that
American liberals love to hate. During his acceptance speech for
the Golden Globe Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a
Supporting Role for ‘Syriana’, Clooney paused to pun on lobbyist
John Abramoff’s name, picking on his parents for “naming their
kid Jack with the word ‘off’ at the end”.
His temper shows through occasionally if caught wrong-
footed on an issue he feels deeply about – such as the time he
snapped at a journalist in Venice for implying his appearance in
advertisements for Nestlé coffee brand Nespresso was perhaps
at odds with a film that directly questioned multinational
companies’ corruption.
“I have made too many
bad films that can be
used to campaign against
me,” he says, answering a
question about running
for office – and everyone
falls in love one more time
Dubai got a taste of it as well. “I disagree with [George W
Bush] and how he is running the country. I am not in Dubai
to call the President of the United States a terrorist,” he snaps,
misunderstanding an awkwardly worded question about the
US’s definition of a terrorist. In the past, he has been known to
call Bush “dim”, and his government “run like the Sopranos”,
America’s favourite gangster family from a soap opera.
World citizen or not, here, with Bush’s victory lap only a
heartbeat away from Clooney’s departure from Dubai, the actor
is every inch an American, even if self-deprecatingly so. “We
are a pretty big island. We don’t learn other people’s languages.
Americans are also good at panicking. Right after Pearl Harbour,
we rounded up all Japanese who were actually American. We
have a history of panicking. We are also pretty good at fixing that
eventually, which is what we are in the process of doing now…”
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