Pretty boys can think

source: the Guardian UK, Feb 15 2003

If you're a hugely bankable Hollywood star, there are certain expectations of you. Maintain your profile, toe the line and keep schtum about politics. George Clooney, on the other hand, is hollering his disdain for his government and its dumb war plans, and he's directed his own, somewhat risky, film. Interview by Sally Vincent.

Fans are three-deep on the pavement outside Claridge's; an abject, anoraked huddle of androgynes, hooded against the drizzle, gazing stolidly at the front entrance. If they wanted to, they could walk into the building, saunter through its lobbies and vestibules, seek outtheir idol, have a good gawp. No one would stop them. But they do not want. Thresholds are what we have the famous for.

George Clooney is unaware of this damp little vigil. He is sitting within 30 yards of the watched door, having a nice cup of tea with a couple of other Hollywood luminaries, comparing symptoms of a virus they believe invaded their chests during last night's flight from California. They do not feel very well. All morning they have been dosing themselves with whatever medicaments have been prescribed by chauffeurs, bell-hops, publicists, press guys, critics, whoever. They are too febrile to risk a proper drink.

"Normally," Clooney remarks, eyeing a passing vodka, "I'm a professional drinker." And repeats, so as not to poop the party, "I drink professionally", then grinds his throat and slaps his chest with the flat of his hand. Such an exhibition of human frailty might disappoint his unseen fans, except that Clooney, with or without his debilitating bug, is precisely as pharaonic, as magnetic, as absurdly handsome, as drop-dead gorgeous as his screen facsimile suggests. When we move into the dining room, a hundred moon-faces wax in his direction, like a field of sunflowers following the light source. There is instant recognition, a beat of one, two, three for a quick, civilised stare, then a hundred reluctant wanings.

I could have sworn he said, "How are you, mad cow?" Twice. Then, "Don't worry, I'm a doctor, you're safe with me." I'm dreaming. The fact of the matter is, he fancies the beef and is asking, in a companionable way, for the current status of mad cow disease in our green and pleasant land, while helpfully informing me, in case I'm too highbrow to know, that he used to play a doctor in a television series called ER. You can see how a man can be misunderstood. Far be it from me to weep over intrusions into the privacies of the rich and famous, but that Dr Ross stint was asking for trouble.

That's the thing with telly-fame. People buy their telly sets, so when you come into their living rooms as the apotheosis of my- son-the-doctor, suffer-little-children, life-and-death-dealing, white- coated Jesus of a bloke, they're going to think they own you like the sideboard or the cat. Film-star fame is subtly different. People have to queue up and buy tickets to get into a cinema, so they take a certain responsibility for the interchange. Clooney observed this distinction years back, while trembling on the cusp of television and film work. He was passing through an airport in company with Mel Gibson and couldn't help noticing that, while Gibson got a few awestruck glances, he was set upon by frenzied fans: "Hey, George, Whoa, Buddy!" - back- slapped, hugged, tousled, and head-locked. Literally head- locked, awhile fully-grown men smacked his head and told him he shouldn't have had his hair cut. "There must come an end to a hug," he says. "I'm having that on my tombstone."

Not that he's whining. He understands. Perry Mason came to town when he was a kid and he followed him around, day and night, shouting Raymond Burr, Raymond Burr. He's got a choice. He could go around with bodyguards, he could tell people to fuck off, or he could just say yes, I'll sign your book. And thank them. I thought it would be witty, at this point, to quote a haunting line from O Brother, Where Art Thou? "Hey!" I piped, "We're in a tight spot. We're in a tight spot." I was all set to say it another four times, for authenticity, only he's telling me he couldn't go into a bar without the entire clientele breaking into the identical routine for five years. He can't even go out in Rome without at least 30 paparazzi on his tail, can't go into a restaurant without ruining everyone's dinner. It's embarrassing. Being looked at. Prejudged. He was embarrassed walking into this restaurant today. He's not whining. It's just that it always makes him feel about six years old. Being famous.

So far as he was concerned, he was always famous. Because his dad was famous. And his aunt was the singer Rosemary Clooney: say no more. His dad was, still is, a journalist, a television newsman. He grew up in Kentucky, a state three times the size of Denmark, where hillbillies live and the cheeseburger was invented and all the boys are called Billy-Bob or Billy-Joe or Billy-Jim, with only about 15 surnames between the lot of them, and if you fell off your porch you'd squash four dogs and injure yourself on your pick-up truck. George's folks had distinguished themselves from the common herd before he was born. His mother had been runner-up in the Miss Kentucky beauty pageant and his father showed his face in people's living rooms. When he went to school, all the other kids knew who his dad was. So they'd give him the knowing stare.

Then, when he was six or seven, his dad would have him on his shows on special occasions. Like St Patrick's Day, they'd dress him up in a little green suit and his dad would say, "How's it going, leprechaun?" and George would wave his pretend cigar and say, "Oooh, busy schedule, this time of year". And Easter, he'd be the Easter Bunny, same cigar, "Oh, busy time, busy time". He thought it was great. In his head, he sounded just like Gregory Peck. He was a telly star. But what with the peripatetic nature of journalism, the Clooneys moved around a good deal, and George had eight different schools to face new stares in. Formative stuff.

With each new class, he'd get this compulsion to get over the moment by doing something daft. Pull a face, do a silly voice, cut a caper. Anything to get a laugh. He's not sure to this day whether it was to deflect attention or to earn it. A bit of both, he thinks. He became the class clown, what Americans call a goofball. If he could get a laugh, he reasoned, he'd somehow be paying his dues for their expectations of him. "That's my 12- year-old self," he says. "If I live up to your expectations, will you let me be me? I'll be anyone you want and I'll go on being him till I can be who I really am."

Meanwhile, at home, he was raised to be seen and heard. The Clooneys entertained and all the Clooney kids were expected to contribute their 10 cents-worth. It was like living in an ongoing vaudeville show.

George specialised in Nat King Cole impersonations and providing the punchlines to his father's more risqué jokes. He must have been a gas. The end product, he supposes, was a young man with an excess of self-confidence and not much else. "Rather poignant, don't you think?" he says drily. Playing to the gallery, waiting to be who you really are till you find you've forgotten who you wanted to be in the first place. "Hey, you're like OJ Simpson being driven down the highway, hotly pursued by the entire police force..."

The funny thing was, he never thought of becoming an actor. Not professionally. He studied journalism at university. Acting was more a peripheral fail-safe for real-life situations, impersonating someone else so as to protect the inner man, whoever he might be. For instance? "You want humiliation?" he says. "I'll give you humiliation." How's about door-to-door insurance salesman. He'd knock on the door and stand there looking gormless, "Is the husband in, ppphhhnn?" he'd say in idiot-speak so as not to feel too bad about himself. In six months he sold only one policy. Clooney seems easy with this line of inquiry. Doubtless it has often proved popular with casual acquaintances who get a bang out of picturing Adonis on his uppers.

"I'll tell you something," he says. "Men make better shoppers than women. Take it from one who knows the retail trade." He sold shoes, apparently. Not nice shoes, more your corrective, orthopaedic jobs for old ladies with beat-up feet, and lace-ups for nurses. In Florence, Kentucky. Very down-town. A man comes into the store, asks for the shoe he wants, tells you his size, you've got it, he buys it. He probably won't even try it on one foot. All over in two minutes. Women want the full service bit. They settle. You get the boxes down from the shelves, four, five, six boxes. They try 'em on. Both feet. Walk about. Up and down, up and down. Waddya think? Take 'em off. Try another four pairs. Both feet. Walk about. Waddya think? Buy a pair. Take 'em home, put tape on the soles, wear 'em for six months, take the tape off, bring 'em back to the store. Don't feel right. Back to square one. Get the boxes off the shelves... He started to take it personally. They were getting away with it, you know?

One of his more enlightening occupations in those days was driving a band of illustrious lady song-stresses while they sang out their declining years through the less salubrious show- places of the United States. Household names who had fallen foul of the rock'n'roll revolution in the mid-1950s. He remembers standing in the wings with the great Helen O'Connell, holding a glass, this tall, of lukewarm Smirnoff, hearing the compere bawling out her intro. "Ladies and gentleman! Now! Live from Harrison. Lake Tahoe. Nevada! Miss Helen O'Connell!!!" And she'd take the vodka from him, down it straight off, gluglugluglug, and on she'd go, this really beautiful, slender, 70-year-old. "Tangerine... Does a lady proud..." He sings it quietly into his Coca-Cola. One of her greatest hits, he says, you know it? Every night it was the same. Knock back the vodka, do her three numbers, then back into the green room until Rosemary (Clooney, he adds, shyly) came on to finish the show and Helen came back into the wings to watch her. As a mark of respect, he always thought.

He remembers asking his aunt one night, how come you can still do it? How come you're better than ever? And she told him it was because she couldn't do the vocal gymnastics any more, couldn't hit the notes the way she used to, she just wasn't showing off any more. "Just singing the song, George, just singing the song." That was his first acting lesson. Don't show off. Let the song sing itself. "Like someone whispers," he says, "and everyone leans towards them."

One day, Rosemary's son, Miguel Ferrer, came to town with his father Jose to make a film about horse-racing. With nothing better to do, George hung out with them for three months. He liked the way the movie people took over the town, the sheer, ring-a-ding power of it all. He still can't think of anywhere he'd rather be than on a movie set. Even now, when he's working, which is pretty much all the time, he stays on set rather than repair to his trailer. Come to think of it, he hasn't even got a trailer. Anyway, they gave him a small part, more out of pity than anything else, and he was hooked. As he headed off to California, he told himself he'd hate to wake up an old man and know he hadn't even tried.

Trying, it turned out, meant auditioning, auditioning and auditioning. Bad television, and other stuff. You know? I don't know. How does Return Of The Killer Tomatoes grab you? Let's not kid ourselves. Return To Horror High? I imagine one or other of these oeuvres provides the clip they keep putting on Before They Were Famous, where a young and transcendentally beautiful Clooney, with flowing hair, encounters something slimy in a cupboard and Boooo! the monster's hand goes to grab him and you can see it's just a Marigold glove. My, how we all laugh. OK, he says, he made a lot of bad movies and he was no damned good in them. It never meant he didn't take it all seriously. Years later, he took Batman seriously, too. They all did. They'd work away on a scene and when it was a wrap they'd all congratulate each other, yeah, great, quite forgetting it was about a bat, for Christ's sake, saving the world.

When you're young, he says, fame is this great, white light you're going towards. You think one day you'll be up there getting your Oscar and then, then, you'll be happy. He was 28 before he realised it doesn't work like that. The things they say make you happy, don't. Not another person, not success, not approval. The only thing worth having, that lasts, is the process of doing what you want to do. Which begins with the hardest part - knowing what it is you want. Once you know that, you can't possibly be a pawn in someone else's game.

Clooney slogged through a dozen years of Hollywood apprenticeship, which must say something for the ameliorating endurance of a sense of humour. By the time he was in his mid- 30s, he had the wit to grasp his toy-boy days were numbered and he must rise from the ashes of ER heart-throbbery and assert rather more of himself. In short, he wanted to make films about subjects he could honourably endorse. It was not an easy transition. He made One Fine Day, which was sweet, and Out Of Sight, which was a thriller with a little more to it. Both films were stylish and respectable. The millennium was upon us all. At this point he remembers something Warren Beatty said to him. He said they never forgive you. He said no matter what you do, they'll never give you credit for making a smart movie. Clooney knew what he meant. He knew he was talking about his own experience, but they both knew what was unsaid. Pretty boys are not allowed to have minds of their own.

In the 21st century, Clooney showed us what he was made of. He made a series of films in a variety of genres, none falling below the status of "caper" and none calling upon him to indulge in such cinematic clichés as bare-arse simulated copulation. First he took the lead in Three Kings, where it is impossible not to feel the depth of his personal disgust for the cynical hypocrisy of the Gulf war and for President Bush Mark 1's administrative weaselings. From Three Kings he went on to give himself a hard time making The Perfect Storm, a gruellingly unsentimental account of the inevitability of man's failure when he pits himself against the elements, and then the exquisitely absurd O Brother, Where Art Thou? As he puts it, he got the image he wanted on the Dapper Dan Pomade tin, showed it to the Coen brothers, they said OK and he went off, cut the moustache and got on with it - a portrait of a man with about as much charisma as a full ashtray. Then, lest we forget that Clooney can out- soigné Sinatra, he did the remake of Ocean's Eleven. Collectively these films pitched Clooney into the upper echelons of stardom, where $20m is routinely offered for his services. It is a bait he has so far refused.

If he wasn't so adorable, you'd think he was boasting. "I did O Brother for nothing," he says. "I did Three Kings for nothing." I imagine that he means comparatively nothing. Nothing compared with the national debt. "I did Solaris for nothing." You'd think he was smug, except you can begin to understand that it was a case of condone your own caricature or do the decent thing.

Clooney relishes his own wilfulness. With a $20m and rising price on his head, he can approach a studio with a film he knows they're never going to make, offer his services for free and have a $40m production budget pressed upon him. It's what he calls a fun thing. The furthest he's stuck his neck out, to date, has been to direct the upcoming Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind. It is palpably nuts. Or is it? Basically, it's one of those things "based on a true story" - in other words, this is someone's account of himself. Put it this way: back in the 1950s, an unprepossessing little squirt of a fidget called Chuck Barris wanted to make a name for himself in television. To this end he invented - precursed, if you like - those game shows where members of a benighted public make fools of themselves and are jeered at by other members of a benighted public. It had to start somewhere. The Dating Game, The Newlywed Game, The Gong Show. You know the kind of abomination. Having squeezed the pips out of this wheeze for a good 20 years, Barris retired to write his memoirs, in which he claims to have pursued a parallel career as a hitman for the CIA, during the course of which he assassinated no less than 33 enemies of God's Own Country.

Unsurprisingly, the book mouldered in remainder bins until it was unearthed by Charlie Kaufman, a Hollywood screenwriter with a penchant for the more unusual cinematic narrative. Kaufman bashed out a screenplay and took it to Clooney, who also knows a can of worms when he sees one. Clooney thought it would be a shame not to make this film, and said so. The old television station locations brought up childhood memories. This could be moody. And the nutty stuff, the killings, he wasn't so sure. He asked the obvious question. He took Kaufman aside and asked him, "Is it true? Do you believe it?" And Kaufman looked him in the eye and gave him the hard stare. Which settled it. Now, when anyone asks Clooney, as I did, "Is it true? Do you believe it?" they get the same hard stare.

It is a matter of principle. A philosophy, if you must. There are no answers, only questions. At 41, that's Clooney's conclusion. And he's only just beginning to know the questions. Let's not rush things. "We're always going to be the society that slows down to look at the wreck on the side of the road," he says. "It's magnetic, isn't it? We see a wreck ahead and we drive past in slow motion, we can't help it, we're looking for the broken body, the victim. Why do we need to do that? Because it's not us. Rather you than me, you know? What can I do? I'm not going to look. I'm dying to, but I'm going to force myself to drive by without looking. I make a point of it. I don't want to be the guy that stares at accidents. The only thing worse is being the guy who sets up the disaster in the first place. Which is where Chuck Barris's self-loathing comes from."

Another question. "Does it depress you," he asks, "when you see Tony Blair going around with his arm around George Bush?" It is a safe question. He already knows the answer. It is depressing. Yes. Clooney, like a lot of Americans, has always made the assumption that the English are, in some indelible, God-given way, smarter than Americans. An English actor comes on the set and they all automatically assume he's a better actor than they are. He likes that. It makes you feel safe, doesn't it, to have someone smarter than you around the place. Just in case. It makes him uneasy to see Bush and Blair all buddy-buddy. But, hey, what does a stupid film star know? A film star who voices his political opinions when he doesn't toe the party line is supposed to be overstepping the mark of his celebrity. He is somehow disenfranchised. But Clooney's a dyed in the wool Democrat, a liberal like his dad. What else would he be? For instance, he's never dated a Republican. Holy shit! It would be too hard! He wouldn't hang out with someone who thought Bush was an intellectual, though he'd defend anyone's right to hold that opinion, if that was the best they could come up with.

"People have different cut-off points. They can't tolerate uncertainties. They try to deal with things, and when it all gets too much they turn to religion. For the certainty of it. I don't want to piss on anyone's beliefs and I don't want anyone pissing on mine. For me, when it all gets too much, I think it's my problem, something I've got to face out. I can't dump it on God. But if you must, you must. You believe when you die you sprout a pair of wings and go flying off into the ether? You want to go the snake- handling route? It's allowed. You've got to tolerate other people's cut-off points. It's not about who's right and who's wrong. You've got to assume everyone's doing the best they can."

"Excuse me," he says, dropping his dark chocolate voice to a confiding whisper, pointing a fork towards one of Gordon Ramsay's culinary embellishments, something pale and speckled from the potato family, "what do you suppose this is?"

"My belief," I say, "is that it is a mousseline. It tastes quite nice."

"Well," he says, "I'm not eating it."

"The question is," he goes on, "do we go on murdering each other, or are we going to take time out to ask ourselves why we're so angry in the first place? I get mad at someone, then I find out more about why they did what they did to make me mad, and the anger disperses. We get angry because we don't have enough information." His mousseline is now neatly stacked on the side of his plate. All tidied away.

"It's the head guys who really tick me off," he says. "You dumb down at the top, so what does that do to the bottom? Who's going to stand up for us now? I just want someone smart to stand up and shout, 'Bullshit!' They tell us we're going to war and no one's saying 'Bullshit' loud enough. And the language! Listen to the language! 'Evil.' 'Evil'? 'Nexus of evil'? 'Evil-doer'? That's my favourite, 'Evil-doer'! What's wrong with their vocabulary: couldn't they come up with 'schmuck'?"

This makes me laugh uncontrollably. I wonder if he'll mind if I gobble up his mousseline. "Look at us," he cries, "we're the guys who marched into France and liberated them, handing out stockings and chocolate. And we've slowly become all the things we fought against. How'd it happen?"

I feel the soul of America is at large. The words of Walt Whitman beat in my brain. "O Captain! My Captain!" I bleat. Clooney looks at me sideways. "We're so smart we don't even try to elect a leader. We elect someone to manage our country. Bush was elected, or sort of elected, on the issues of school vouchers and welfare reform. When the big one hit, we found we didn't have a leader at all. What did Bush do on 9/11? He ran away and hid. Even Reagan knew more about leadership than that, and he was as bad a symbol of America as I can think of, off- hand. But at least he's been in enough cowboy movies to know he had to come out and stand on top of the rubble and be seen shaking his fist or something. What has it all come down to? Selling things on television, is what. The three-second soundbite. We don't have any great speakers any more, we don't have great television any more, we don't have great films any more. Everything's knocked out by committee. That's how it is. How we deal with everything. That's politics. You turn on the TV for the news now and what do you get? 'Showdown in Iraq!' it goes, like it's a game. The news is a fucking game show. They're selling us a pre-emptive war and no one says, 'Bullshit'. It's a conglomerate decision, all rounded off to make it palatable so we'll swallow it, believe it. But it's a lie. Of course it's a lie. We've been lying to ourselves since Vietnam. And if you say that, if you stand up and say no to the war in Iraq, immediately you're being 'unpatriotic'. But if you don't, if it's not you, who the fuck's it going to be?"

O Captain! My Captain! "It's not my place. I'm not a big, like, yogi guy, I'm just a stoopid film star. Stooooopid, goofball film star."

"Big guru guy," I say.

"Big guru guy," he says.

"I'll tell you what'll happen some day," he says. "Some day, some point when we've had enough of the idea that we're going to win any fight by killing people, when we're willing to ask ourselves why we hate and why we're hated, we're going to get us a president who comes out on the Yes I Did It campaign. He's going to look back at where he's been and admit it. 'Yes, I slept with her.' And he's going to look where he's going. And one day he's going to say, listen, in 10 years' time cars won't work on the internal combustion engine. We'll all have electric cars. If their usefulness to us doesn't exist any more, we won't have to blow up Sudan or Iraq or Saudi Arabia or Libya. Take away the want. Go back to our proper position in the world, which ain't running it. Yup. That's it. Don't kill people. Drive electric cars."

They came and took him away at this point. His people. "Are the dancing girls upstairs?" he says wittily. "Are they ready for me?" But it was only the doctor. I had quite forgotten the virus.

I forgot, too, that while we set the world to rights, I'd taken what Americans call a bathroom break. I ran both ways. He couldn't have been alone for more than two minutes. When I got back, he was chuckling to himself. He said he'd been playing with my tape-recorder and had left me a special message on it, hee-hee- hee. Next day, odd things started to happen. I found a teaspoon in the rubbish at the bottom of the receptacle I am pleased to call my handbag. Then another spoon. Then a pair of sugar tongs. God knows how they got there. And then I came upon my special message: "I'll be warning the maitre d' that a woman has been stealing the silverware."

· Solaris is released on February 28. Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind is released on March 14.