George Clooney: The Mind Behind The Eyes

Q: From the altercation with Russell to your battling TV Guide with charges that they wouldn't put your "ER" costar Eriq La Salle on the cover because of skin color, you seem quick to take on powerful adversaries when it's not in your self-interest.

A: Eriq wanted to go after TV Guide and rightly so--he'd done three photo shoots for them, and they never put him on the cover. Maybe you do one and they don't put you on the cover, but not three. Problem was, his complaining made it look like he was an actor who was upset about not getting on the cover of a magazine as opposed to the bigger issue of racism. I said, let this cast, all of us, take this up. First thing we had to do was research. Then I called the editor and asked. Why? He said, You can't tell us what to do. I said, Absolutely not, but I can point it out when you don't do it. We were going to go after them, but then the whole thing happened with Princess Diana and I became the go-to person on that issue.

Q: Which was because of your earlier battle with the tabloid show "Hard Copy," Where does your willingness to fight all these battles come from?

A: It's all from my dad. He'd say things like. Don't come back and look me in the eye if you don't do the right thing. With the Diana thing, I knew I was going to be talked about as one of those whiny actors. But as people, we are all held responsible for our actions. With the "Hard Copy" issue, I'd told Paramount I wasn't going to help them make money by being on one of their shows ["Entertainment Tonight," "Hard Copy's then-sister show] when they encourage kids with video cameras who walk through the airports and pick rights with my girlfriend, saying, "Hey, who's the fat chick?'' so that I get into a fight with them and they sell that to Paramount Television for "Hard Copy." Every day another celebrity joined the boycott, and it turned out to be a great success. And for all intents and purposes, I'm still standing, and "Hard Copy" is gone.

Q: Despite these battles, you seem to be a real fan of journalism, You've said you want to make a TV movie out of Edward R. Murrow's battle against Sen. Joseph McCarthy's communist witch hunt, is he a hero of yours?

A: My absolute hero. Journalists were heroes to my father and to me while I was growing up. Journalists changed the world. Maybe the bravest act I've ever seen anyone do is Murrow standing up to McCarthy when no one was going after him. When I was growing up. Woodward and Bernstein brought down a crooked presidency. Walter Cronkite is the reason that the Vietnam War ended when it did. Journalists changed the world. Most of the journalists I know really want to do things right. What they hate more than anything is being grouped in with idiots who call themselves journalists.

Q: You are nostalgic for great journalists, and when you bring up actors, you bring up old greats. Who's your hero as an actor?

A: I've watched tons of old movies, but new ones as well. Gene Hackman's as good an actor as I've seen working. But Spencer Tracy is my all-time favorite. I also loved Henry Fonda. The best of the actor/actors, the guys out of the Actors Studio, was Montgomery Gift. He was better than Brando, better than Dean. Watch him in A Place in the Sun--you'd be hard pressed to find a better performance. Paul Newman in The Verdict is as good a performance as you'll ever see. Daniel Day-Lewis in My Left Foot is shockingly good--you just sit there and say, I quit, I am never going to be able to do that.

Q: You mentioned earlier you have limitations as an actor. How do you evaluate yourself?

A: Some of those limitations have come from fame. I'm not famous from theater or movies, I'm famous from television and it's a whole different kind of thing, much more intrusive. You pay eight bucks to see a movie star, they're 60 feet tall and it's a big deal. I was in your house every day. You watched me in your underwear. "ER" did a 40 share with 150 channels out there--it was one of the most successful shows in the history of television when it was at its peak. We were this focal point in people's homes even-day. They feel they get to know you personally. They don't want to let you do other things.

Q: Is the reason you didn't do a Boston accent like the others in The Perfect Storm that you thought the audience wouldn't buy it?

A: First of all, Billy, my character in The Perfect Storm, didn't have one; he was from Florida. But we talked about it. I'm a pretty good mimic. I can do accents pretty well. We tried it a couple times, but we decided that even if it was absolutely perfect, people would spend the first 15 minutes watching me and listening for it.

Q: Would it have been like Kevin Costner's accent in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves?

A: No. That was just a bad accent. He's a talented actor, but that was a horrible accent. It would have been more like Out of Africa, when Redford had a good English accent, but the director took it out and explained, you're Robert Redford. You do it great, but you're Robert Redford and it doesn't work. I get away with the Southern accent in O Brother, but then, I'm from Kentucky, so it's easier, and the dialogue is written to be spoken that way.

Q: You've teamed up in a production company with your Out of Sight director, Steven Soderbergh. Normally, when a star forms a production company, it's with a businessman who'll cover things while they're AWOL on a project. But Soderbergh will be as distracted as you.

A: We're friends, and we share similar tastes in material and the two of us together can attract a different quality of project. I started out with a nice guy who had the old producer ideal--you get 35 projects in development and do two or three of them. I looked at all the projects and said, I wouldn't do any of these. When that deal was up, I said to Steven, Look, let's do movies we want to do. It was a way for me to protect Steven, and for Steven to protect me. He's got great taste.

Q: Your next film is with Steven--an updated version of the 1960 film Ocean's Eleven.

A: My friends and I are on a bus going cross country. I get the tape for Ocean's Eleven, figuring it's the coolest guys in the world, Frank, Sammy, Dean. We pop it in, and it's like, Yeah, woooo, Ocean's Eleven. Ten minutes in, and it's like, Woo. Another five minutes, it's like, Whoa, get this off. Ocean's Eleven isn't a good movie at all. Then Warner Bros, sent me Ted Griffin's remake script, and I said, wow, this is a great script. The only thing similar is 11 guys pulling a heist. I'm not playing Frank Sinatra, nobody's playing Sammy or Dean. Steven calls me that night and says, I just finished Ocean's Eleven and I know how to do it. I've known Steven for four years and I've sent him 20 scripts and he not only passes, he says, no way dude. He's a snob. Next day we walk in to see Lorenzo di Bonaventura at Warner Bros., and he greenlights it on the spot. We start talking to Brad Pitt and he's in. Steven had just finished Erin Brockovich with Julia Roberts and he sends her the script with $20 tucked in and a note saying. "I hear you get 20 a picture now." She's in. Then everybody starts calling, you can't imagine the names. We're going to have a terrific cast, everybody working below rate. We said, If we all get paid, we can't make the movie, so why don't we all just cake a big chunk of the backend, work cheap and see if there's any money at the end.

Q: You're involved in the project Gates of Fire, based on Steven Pressfield's novel about the stand by 300 Spartans against tens of thousands of Persians in the Battle of Thermopylae, which Michael Mann is developing.

A: Gates of Fire is an amazing story. Gladiator was my favorite film of the year, but I think Gates of Fire is a better story. Bruce Willis calls me about once every two months, asking what's going on. He's dying, dying to do it.

Q: You were in the closing scene of The Thin Red Line, and everyone in the theater said, Hey, there's George Clooney, and then it was over.

A: That's the one movie I really got the shaft on. When I heard Terry Malick was doing a movie, I wanted right away to be in it. Everybody did. I had a few scenes. We shot them. I saw them, I'd done a good job. Later Terry called and said one of the storylines had gotten cut, so they had to cut some of my stuff. I said, OK, what am I in? He says, well, just that last scene. I say, Terry, please, cut me out completely. Don't leave me in the last scene of the movie. He says, well, we kind of need that. I begged. I tried everything. I told him to say I sucked. I think because he lives in this igloo of an isolated life, he didn't realize I was too famous to be in one scene at the end of the movie. He didn't see it would stand out like a horrible casting thing.

Q: It must have been disappointing when you saw the movie.

A: I never saw it. I can't see it, it's too frustrating. No knock on Terry. I hear the film's amazing, but that's one where I lost big.

Q: You seem to be a student of history, yet you weren't a good student in school. Were you a good reader?

A: I read a lot. My father used to give me book reports to do because he was afraid I wasn't reading enough. I love books like Guadalcanal Diary. I was a big war book guy, always had American Heritage, those kinds of magazines I loved. I did all the normal books when I was a kid.

Q: What books stand out in your memory?

A: I remember reading Mein Kampf, thinking it was an amazing book. It's shocking. It makes you think that [English Prime Minister] Neville Chamberlain is the stupidest man who ever lived. Did he read Mein Kampf, which Hitler wrote 14 years earlier? Hitler told him exactly what he was going to do.

Q: The way you've stood up to bullies and insisted on honoring your "ER" contract so that you came to be the lowest paid regular when you were the biggest star, you exhibit qualities a parent tries to pass on to their children. Yet you've been steadfast about getting married and having your own children.

A: I'm perfectly willing to do things that I'm supposed to do. People have made a big deal about my renegotiating the "ER" contract, but the truth of the matter is that wasn't something spectacular at all. It's a scary profession we're in when just doing what you're supposed to do is some kind of distinction. But there are a million other things I don't do well, and I don't want to drop all of those things on some kid. Everything you mentioned is easy to do. Raising kids is not. It you want to talk about heroes, parents are heroes.

Q: It does seem to be some kind of Peter Pan syndrome thing with you.

A: That's exactly what it is.

Q: Your Peacemaker costar Nicole Kidman bet you $10,000 you'd have a kid by age 40. Why do I get the feeling she'll be proved right?

A: She might be. When I said those things, I hadn't hammered it out with two stones on a mountaintop. It was just something I said at the time. It's an unusual thing to say and it stuck with me.

Q: The thing that tells me you might be parenting material after all is the pig you bought when it was tiny and cute and didn't get rid of when it grew into an oversized filthy animal.

A: I haven't bailed on him, but I'm sure if he could talk, he'd be saying things like, the guy's hardly ever around. He yells at me, kicked me in the ass a few times, things you couldn't do with a kid. Let me tell you, if "Hard Copy'' was still around and that pig could talk, this would be a whole different interview.

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Michael Fleming interviewed Mel Gibson for the July issue of Movieline.

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