Features

November 1, 2009

World’s luckiest bachelor

With steady work and adoring fans, Clooney is loving Hollywood life.

AMY LONGSDORF For The Times Leader

George Clooney has his work cut out for him. Not only is he busy promoting three upcoming movies, but he’s also helping pal Matt Damon reclaim the title of People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive.

“Here’s the thing,” Clooney teases, “Matt is very competitive with both Brad (Pitt) and myself. Brad and me are both two-time Sexiest Men Alive winners. Matt’s only won it that one time, and I sort of consider it a bit of a fluke. Having seen him recently, I’d say he’s got a lot of work to do if he wants to get that title back. So I’m going to work with him because he’s going to have to run a strong campaign this year.”

Don’t worry about Clooney spreading himself too thin. He’s used to multitasking. The same year he won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for “Syriana,” he co-wrote and directed the acclaimed Edward R. Murrow biopic “Good Night and Good Luck.”

This season, Clooney is starring in a trio of flicks, including “Up in the Air” (Dec. 8), a Jason Reitman-directed drama about a corporate downsizing expert who develops a conscience after falling in love with a fellow frequent traveler (Vera Farmiga), and “The Men Who Stare At Goats” (Friday), a black comedy about the true-life adventures of an oddball U.S. military outfit (Kevin Spacey, Jeff Bridges) investigating telepathy and other paranormal phenomena.

And just in case you still haven’t had your fill of Clooney, he pops up as the title character in “Fantastic Mr. Fox” (Nov. 25), a stop-motion animated tale that director Wes Anderson adapted from a beloved children’s book by Roald Dahl.

So, is Clooney the hardest-working man in show business or what?

“No, I’m the guy with the worst timing in show business,” the actor, 48, says. “I did ‘Fantastic Mr. Fox’ a couple of years ago, but it all just sort of timed out (this way). … But I’m very proud of all three of them, and so I’m happy they’re coming out.”

Of the three films awaiting release, “The Men Who Stare At Goats” might be the closest to Clooney’s heart. The movie, written by Peter Straughan from a book by Jon Ronson, marks the directorial debut of Grant Heslov, Clooney’s long-time producing partner and the co-scripter of “Good Night and Good Luck.”

Asked what drove him to shepherd “Goats” to the big screen, Clooney jokes, “We thought this would be a slam-dunk, right up there with ‘Transformers 2’ because it’s big things with goats. Any time you’ve got the word ‘goat’ in the title, you just think money.

“Seriously, it was just a good script. In fact, it was considered one of the best unproduced scripts around for a long time. I knew Grant was incredibly capable. … I just think you can’t go wrong working on good projects.”

In the movie, a handful of soldiers are ordered to embrace the New Age movement after the U.S. receives news that Russia is developing parapsychology as a weapon. Clooney’s Lyn Cassady is trained in the art of invisibility and claims to be able to stop a goat’s heart simply by staring at it.

To say that Lyn is one of Clooney’s stranger creations is an understatement. The actor compares the character to some of the goofballs he’s played for the Coen Brothers in “O Brother, Where Art Thou” and “Burn After Reading.”

“I call it the ‘the idiot syndrome,’ “ Clooney says. “When I did the first scene with the Coen Brothers on ‘O Brother, Where Art Thou,’ I was sort of playing it dumb, and they said, ‘You think you’re the smartest guy in the room.’ That was really good direction and made perfect sense. These know-it-all characters are funny to me; they never fail to make me laugh.”

In “Fantastic Mr. Fox,” Clooney gets to connect with his inner predator for a turn as a suave fox who, along with his wife (Meryl Streep) and son (Jason Schwartzman), tunnels out of a tough situation when local farmers decide to put an end to his chicken-snatching business.

Initially, Clooney admits, he was skeptical about some of the darker underpinnings to the story.

“I remember reading the script and saying to Wes, ‘I love it, and I’m thrilled to do it, but I don’t know who’ll see it because it’s sort of made for grownups and sort of made for kids.’ He said, ‘Don’t worry about that. Let’s just go make the movie and have some fun.’ I thought that was a great way of approaching it.”

Typically in animated movies, actors perform their voice-over work in antiseptic recording studios. Anderson decided to go a different route and take his cast members, including Bill Murray and Owen Wilson, to real locations, such as an isolated Connecticut farm.

“We were out in the middle of nowhere, on people’s farms, doing sound effects and things like that, rolling around in the fields,” Clooney says. “So the whole process was exciting.”

Ask Clooney if playing a father made him long for children of his own, and he’s ready with a joke. “No, but I’m thinking of adopting some of Brad Pitt’s kids. I owe him a few.”

Marriage is another subject that brings out the kidder in Clooney.

“I didn’t want to say it here because it seems like a strange place to announce it, but I’m going to get married tonight, at some point,” he says. He’s dating Italian TV presenter Elisabetta Canalis and has been single since his brief marriage to actress Talia Balsam (“Mad Men”) ended in 1989.

With the possible exception of Pitt and Damon, no one in Hollywood wears his success quite as comfortably as Clooney. Blessed with matinee-idol looks and a wicked sense of humor, he’s often compared to actors from Hollywood’s Golden Age, primarily because he makes it all look easy.

Clooney says one of the reasons he’s so comfortable with all the attention is that he struggled for more than a decade on bad TV shows before “E.R.” turned him into an overnight star. By then, he was ready for the wild ride ahead of him.

“Look, everything is luck, as you know,” insists the actor, whose aunt was crooner Rosemary Clooney. “And the truth of the matter is that I was lucky to end up on a television show that was averaging 40 million viewers a week.”

Clooney can still remember visiting an L.A. restaurant called the Smokehouse with the rest of the “E.R.” cast a week before the series aired. All the actors were dressed in their doctors’ smocks, which became a big problem when Anthony Edwards’ son nearly choked to death on a french fry.

“We’re all wearing our doctor outfits, and nobody knows who we are but we’re all shouting, ‘Somebody, do something!’ All these people were looking at us, like, ‘You’re doctors. You do something.’ We had to say, ‘No, please help this little boy!’ Then about a week later, they all figured out who we were.”

Clooney credits his father, former broadcaster Nick Clooney, with helping keep him grounded. It was his father who taught the actor to never take himself too seriously.

“My dad sort of explained to me that all of this is fleeting and can go away pretty quickly,” Clooney says. “I remember us watching an episode of ‘This Is Your Life’ with Charlie Chaplin, and Charlie’s sitting there and (announcer Ralph Edwards) is going, ‘You owned all these studios and then tragedy struck.’ ”

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