But…you know, there's a lot worse things in the world. People are dealing with a lot bigger problems. His beard is rugged and snowy.
His quarantine cut is the full Julius Caesar. His eyes, noble and recessed, look like something that should be on the side of a coin. He jokes about being old and looking older, but this itself is an old joke. Most of his best parts—going back to 's Out of Sight —have involved playing guys 10 years older than he is. He's tried it the other way—he and Paul Newman were once going to do The Notebook together, with Clooney in the part that eventually went to Ryan Gosling, playing the younger version of Newman—but it never works.
Clooney can't even play the younger version of himself. For The Midnight Sky, which he produces, directs, and stars in, he had to cast Ethan Peck, the grandson of Gregory, to play his character as a younger man.
He is in his living room because what used to be his combination bar and office is now a nursery for his twins. He is just evidently proud: Amal Clooney has only hours before submitted a letter to the U. It's all over the news. In The Midnight Sky, Clooney plays a ravaged, lonely scientist who believes himself to be the last surviving man on the planet until he locates a returning spaceship, full of living astronauts, bound for Earth.
Clooney gives a performance, in its stillness and sadness, that has echoes of characters he has played in The American and Syriana and even Michael Clayton —men sunk deep inside themselves and their past sins.
The film is about regret, but it's also about the possibility of redemption; its stubborn optimism is what makes it a George Clooney movie. Felicity Jones, who stars opposite Clooney in The Midnight Sky, says she thought the search for meaning at the end of things had extra resonance for him, especially as the world began to fall apart this year.
The Midnight Sky is also a reminder that Clooney, who has had one of the great acting careers in modern Hollywood, rarely actually appears onscreen anymore. Since , he has taken on only a handful of roles, choosing instead to focus on directing.
When he has acted, it's mostly been in his own stuff—'s The Monuments Men, last year's television series Catch —because the presence of George Clooney in a project still goes a long way toward getting it made.
His reasons for stepping back from most other acting jobs are complex and surprising, and in time we'll discuss them in detail. But at least one of those reasons is very simple, and that reason is that he feels great affection for his wife of six years and would generally rather spend time with her than do anything else. Clooney will tell you about Amal unprompted and then return to the subject again without ever having been asked. Clooney, whose divorce and subsequent bachelor years were objects of great and enduring tabloid fascination, says he was content with his life—more than content, even.
Work was enough; it was more than enough. And I didn't know how un-full it was until I met Amal. And then everything changed. You know? And then tack on two more individuals, who are small and have to be fed. And here, in fact, comes one of them now, bombing into the frame. Clooney's whole face lights up. Here's Alexander. Here's my son.
Come here! Say hi! Say hello! Alexander has a mop of brown hair and chaotic teeth and looks like the son of George and Amal Clooney. Clooney gathers his son in his lap, and for a while he forgets about me and just talks to his boy.
Do you know that? What is that? Did you have chocolate? Let's hear you say something in Italian. He is describing his life. What you are glimpsing, in these moments, is the halo of a career so improbable, so dependent on luck and timing, that it will likely never be re-created.
I interrupt to note that ER, the television show that first made Clooney a star, began in And yet, apparently, he still remembers the number of people who watched it, 26 years later. And for me, it changed everything. Clooney was 33 and had already been acting for a while when ER first aired, but what he would experience next is the kind of fame and recognition that only a handful of people in the history of this country have ever been able to know or understand.
He was the interest we all shared. He was just a dude that came out to nightclubs in New York and chased chicks. I mean, that's all he was. Now, at 59, Clooney tends to the myth of himself, built and burnished over the years, and to his actual domestic life, which used to be lived between film sets and plummy talk show appearances and now is what makes him happiest. Feeling that he was always on the cusp of something bigger, something greater, Clooney found his situation difficult.
You actually feel like you're succeeding. All that changed in , when Clooney was cast in a new medical drama called ER. Clooney played Dr. Doug Ross, a caring pediatrician and a notorious ladies man, in the ensemble drama, which also featured Anthony Edwards, Julianna Margulies and Sherry Stringfield. Soon after its September debut, Clooney was on his way to becoming one of the show's breakout stars, attracting the attention of film industry movers and shakers.
His classic good looks and easygoing charm made him a natural for the big screen. Clooney worked at a hectic pace, managing to appear in several films during his time on ER.
In the romantic comedy One Fine Day , Clooney played a divorced father who falls for a single mother Michelle Pfeiffer. In , Clooney turned in his ER scrubs to pursue his film career full time.
He won a Golden Globe Award for his work on the film. Clooney also reteamed with Wahlberg for the popular disaster-at-sea film The Perfect Storm , based on Sebastian Junger's bestselling novel. The actor, who for so long had wondered if he'd truly make it big, was now Hollywood royalty. He played Danny Ocean, a role originated by famed crooner Frank Sinatra. It proved to be such a successful venture on- and off-screen that it spawned two sequels, Ocean's Twelve and Ocean's Thirteen.
The following year, Clooney made his directorial debut with Confessions of a Dangerous Mind Despite the film's poor box office performance and weak reviews, Clooney continued to work behind the scenes, serving as a producer on the political drama Syriana.
The usually fit Clooney gained roughly 30 pounds to play a government agent in the film, which explored political intrigue and corruption in the Middle East. Badly hurt during the filming of a scene, he damaged the membrane around his spine. The injury caused spinal fluid to leak from his nose and left him with terrible back pain.
After completing the film, Clooney underwent two surgeries to fix the problem. All of his hard work on Syriana did not go unnoticed.
In , Clooney won the Academy Award for best supporting actor for his role in the film. He was also nominated for another important project, Good Night, and Good Luck , that same year. The film examines the clash between distinguished news anchor Edward R.
Murrow and Senator Joseph McCarthy. Clooney directed the film and co-wrote the screenplay, which served partly as a tribute to his newsman father. Widely praised, the black-and-white drama helped Clooney earn his first nominations, for best director and best original screenplay. Clooney's next starring role was in the dramatic comedy, Up in the Air , which earned him rave reviews. In the film, Clooney played Ryan Bingham, a consultant who specializes in firing employees.
For The Ides of March in , Clooney proved to be a triple-threat, serving as the project's star, director, and co-writer. The political drama featured Clooney as a presidential candidate and Ryan Gosling as one of his aides.
Actor George Clooney has issued an open letter asking media outlets not to publish photos that show his children's faces. The star says such images put his two children in danger, particularly due to his wife's line of work. Amal Clooney is a human rights lawyer who, the actor notes in his letter, puts terrorist groups on trial.
His comments were published by several trade magazines, including Variety, The Hollywood Reporter and Deadline. The actor, who has starred in Gravity and Ocean's Eleven, said he and his wife are not on social media and are protective of their children's privacy.
Clooney said he decided to write the letter after seeing photos of US actress Billie Lourd's one-year-old daughter published online. I'm different from a lot of guys. I don't go up to girls I don't know in a bar and ask them to dance. I never have. I've never gone up to somebody I don't know and asked them out. I just won't do it and never did, because I never wanted to take my ego, as fragile as any guy's, and hand it to some girl so that she could demolish it. To me it has always seemed like a stupid thing to do.
So in terms of, like, "Hey, you want to go out? I had never been to the Playboy Mansion and really wanted to go. We were all sort of protecting one another; you don't want to seem like you're desperate. I grew up with the magazine, so naturally I wanted to see the Grotto. When I got there, I was cornered by about 15 people, most of them pretty girls. But it's not like you might imagine. Instead, they all wanted to have their picture taken with me. When that happens, it's like you're a cardboard cutout for people to stand next to.
It's not like talking to a girl and getting to know her. At the height of it, when there were people pulling at me from every direction and it was at its most embarrassing, some guy comes over and says, "Look at this shit, man! You got it made! Chicks are all over you. Then it was just about being a guy talking to a girl and all the other stuff that's so interesting about dating-that dance you do.
You see somebody at a party and lock eyes and eventually get closer and closer to each other. Somehow you find a way to talk and maybe-all that stuff. That's a turn-on. That has been taken away from me. If you were to ask what I miss about the anonymity that I used to have, it's that experience, that slow and natural getting to know someone - that kind of electricity.
I'm a year-old man. In the way I was raised, this is the time when you make your mark. In your 20s, you figure out what it is you're going to be. You do a lot of different jobs. By your late 20s, you sort of have some idea of what it is. Then you spend your 30s and a lot of your 40s making your mark.
You spend your 50s being able to reap the benefits of the work that you've done. In college, I basically partied a lot. You gotta understand. We're a very strict Catholic family. Curfew was at nine p. So I got out of the house and thought, Oh my God! People don't ever really like to talk about this anymore, but there was a period of time when blow was considered OK, like it won't hurt you at all.
It was almost mainstream. All the designer drugs were OK-Quaaludes and blow. So that was the time in college for me: Drugs and chasing girls. I came from a town of people to Cincinnati. I would visit class every once in a while and stop by and go, "How's everybody doing? I had jobs. I sold men's suits and shoes and worked in stockrooms of department stores, and I cut tobacco when it was the season. I was paying for my thing along the way. But I quit school. It was down to three actors, including Brad and me, at one time.
I read about five times with Geena Davis. I thought I was going to get it, but Brad did. The part catapulted him. I didn't watch the movie for a couple of years and then rented it on tape one night. I watched it and, of course, he's perfect in the role, better than I would have been. Russell on Three Kings ] He'd throw off his headset and scream, "Today the sound department fucked me!
Once, he went after a camera-car driver who I knew from high school. I had nothing to do with his getting his job, but David began yelling and screaming at him and embarrassing him in front of everybody. I told him, "You can yell and scream and even fire him, but what you can't do is humiliate him in front of people.
Not on my set, if I have any say about it". Another time, he screamed at the script supervisor and made her cry. I wrote him a letter and said, "Look, I don't know why you do this. You've written a brilliant script, and I think you're a good director. Let's not have a set like this. I don't like it and I don't work well like this". I'm not one of those actors who likes things in disarray. He read the letter and we started all over again.
But later, we were three weeks behind schedule, which puts some pressure on you, and he was in a bad mood. These army kids, who were working as extras, were supposed to tackle us. There were three helicopters in the air and extras on the set. It was a tense time, and a little dangerous, too.
David wanted one of the extras to grab me and throw me down. This kid was a little nervous about it, and David walked up to him and grabbed him. He pushed him onto the ground. He kicked him and screamed, "Do you want to be in this fucking movie? Then throw him to the fucking ground! You want them to do something, you tell me". David grabbed his walkie-talkie and threw it on the ground.
He screamed, "Shut the fuck up! Fuck you", and the AD goes, "Fuck you! I quit". He walked off. It was a dangerous time. I'd sent him this letter. I was trying to make things work, so I went over and put my arm around him. I said, "David, it's a big day. But you can't shove, push or humiliate people who aren't allowed to defend themselves".
He turned on me and said, "Why don't you just worry about your fucked-up act? You're being a dick. You want to hit me? Come on, pussy, hit me". I'm looking at him like he's out of his mind. Then, he started banging me on the head with his head.
He goes, "Hit me, you pussy. Hit me". Then, he got me by the throat and I went nuts. Waldo, my buddy, one of the boys, grabbed me by the waist to get me to let go of him. I had him by the throat. I was going to kill him.
Kill him. Finally, he apologized, but I walked away. By then, the Warner Bros. David sort of pouted through the rest of the shoot and we finished the movie, but it was truly, without exception, the worst experience of my life. When I first started out in television, I took any job that came along.
It was, 'Let's just get a job, any job'. I fought to get ER and I got it and it changed my life. Then, when I started doing movies, the same thing happened. At first, I did anything that I could get. But I learned.
In TV, I learned to focus on the script, but I didn't apply that lesson to movies. But you can't take a bad script and make a good movie. I love Spencer Tracy. Love him. He's a hero of mine. I heard he never wore makeup, so I've never worn makeup, ever. I won't put it on in any movie. I'm dark complexioned, so I can get away with it.
I cut my own hair. It's sort of still being scrappy. It makes you feel like a guy still. I still can take my motorcycle apart and put it back together again. It keeps you feeling like you're still a guy. You have to fight for that. What happens when you're famous is that you get a flat tire and come back and your assistants have fixed it for you. You'll come into a bar and it's really fun and exciting and a guy comes over and says, "Mr.
Clooney, come with us", and they take you to a private room in the back. You're thinking, I don't want to be in here. I want to be out there. What the fuck am I doing in here? So you have to fight it as much as you can. It's possible to be a guy with your friends. You get on your motorcycles, you head out on the road. It's as good as it gets. Everybody makes moral choices that better themselves and hurt someone else. And then we look at whether the means justify the ends.
That ego issue, which is always an interesting thing. What happens is, you get a modicum of success, and then it becomes about the strangest shit you've ever seen.
0コメント