George Clooney

Born in 1961 in Lexington (Kentucky), into a family of Irish origin, George is the son of Nick Clooney, television presenter. He is also the nephew of the famous actor Mel Ferrer , as well as Rosemary Clooney ., singer and actress popular in the 50s. “My last name was famous when I was born, although I had always wanted to succeed on my own merits,” says the actor. As a child, George regularly took part in the program that his father ran on a local station, but he never thought of dedicating himself to the show, but rather his concerns were directed towards the world of sports. Until he was 21, he aspired to be a baseball star, but when he tried out for the Cincinnatti Reds, he realized he wasn’t for him. “They laughed at me,” he recalls. So he enrolled in Communication Sciences at the University of Kentucky, but never finished.

During his studies, Clooney belonged to the college theater group, but he did not take his artistic vocation seriously. Everything changed when his uncle Mel Ferrer got him a role in And They’re Off , which, although it was never filmed, left the young George fascinated by acting. Determined to become a professional actor, he spent a summer working on tobacco farms to raise money to go to Los Angeles to try his luck. There, his aunt Rosemary hired him as a driver, while he went to all kinds of castings and studied at an acting school. Although his inexperience showed, he was a guy who was liked. For example, he went to the Reservoir Dogs casting, and although Tarantino thought it was very bad and did not hire him, he became his friend. It is said that he got his first job, a television commercial, because he showed up to the tests with six cans of beer. It was the beginning of a series of small roles in various television series and B-movies, such as The Return of the Killer Tomatoes . At least, he gathered enough tables to get an important role, the pediatrician Doug Ross, one of the protagonists of ER , which began broadcasting in 1993. The series and his character were so successful that he was soon proposed to star in feature films.

Quentin Tarantino remembered him for a film he had written and in which he himself was going to star, From Dusk Till Dawn , for which reason he recommended the film’s director, Robert Rodríguez. It was a film with a simple and light plot, reminiscent of gore cinema , but the truth is that it swept the billboards, and Clooney became one of the most requested actors on the big screen. So much so that in 1997 he was starring in three big-budget movies. In the comedy One Unforgettable Day , he was a divorced father who lacked time to take care of his son because of his work, and who fell in love with Michelle Pfeiffer , another mother in the same situation; in The Peacemakerhe was a military man looking for some gun thieves, helped by Nicole Kidman ; and in Batman and Robin , he was the famous Batman, in the last installment of the saga to date. One of Clooney’s biggest professional disappointments occurred in the anti-war plea The Thin Red Line , because in the montage, director Terrence Malick reduced his labored intervention to a single scene. The actor came to ask that this scene be removed and that it be removed from the credits.

In 1999 he decided to leave his character in ER , which had launched him to fame, and concentrate on his film career. Next, in addition to the great success he had with The Perfect Storm , and the correct The Three Kings , she interpreted his best work, O Brother! , filming in which he became very friendly with the great Coen brothers, who would repeat with him in Intolerable cruelty . He also got along with Steven Soderberg, because although their first collaboration together, A Very Dangerous Romance , is not one of the best titles from the author of Traffic , Clooney would repeat in Solaris , Ocean’s Eleven, and in the sequel to the latter, Ocean’s Twelve , soon to be released. In addition, together they formed their own production company, Section 8, with which they produced a proper comedy, Welcome to Collinwood , in which Clooney played a small role, and Clooney’s own directorial debut, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind . Scripted by Charlie Kaufman , the original writer of Adaptation, is the story of a television presenter who wrote a book explaining that he had been a CIA agent. “When I shot the film I thought it was a lie, but later the CIA came out with a statement denying the facts that are narrated in the script, so in the end I am convinced that there is something true,” jokes Clooney.

In his personal life he has not been accompanied by the same success as on the screen. Little is known about the multiple romantic relationships that he has maintained, because although it seems that Clooney has not had much luck, at least he is a discreet man. He married a certain Talia Balsam in 1989, whom he divorced three years later, explaining that it had been a bad experience and that he would not try it again, nor did he want to have children. Still, Nicole Kidman, when she worked with him, bet $10,000 that the actor would settle down again before he was forty. On her fortieth birthday, she sent him a check for that amount, conceding her defeat. Clooney returned it with a note that read: “Double or nothing: let’s wait ten more years.”