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An Oscar winning actor with wit, brains and good looks, George Clooney seems to have it all. But as his new film Leatherheads opens worldwide he tells FOCUS that success has not come without hard work and a few knocks.
The only man to be Oscar nominated in the categories of best supporting actor, best original screenplay and best director in the same year, George Clooney is what the film industry terms a triple threat - a talent proven across multiple disciplines.
Of course we all know Clooney the actor, the ER star who found film fame with Out Of Sight and established himself with hits such as Three Kings, Ocean's Eleven and its sequels, O Brother, Where Art Thou? and Syriana, for which he won his Academy Award in 2006.
That same year his talents as a writer and director were also recognised by the Academy for Good Night, And Good Luck, a powerful account of malign McCarthyist witch-hunts of the 1950s. Striking a chord with Clooney's own libertarian principles it was his second film as director, following the quirkily enjoyable Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind four years previously.
And now we have Leatherheads, a screwball comedy set in the 1920s against the backdrop of the fledgling pro-football leagues. As different a movie again from those he has directed before, it is another sign that George Clooney the director is tackling a pleasingly diverse range of movies.
"It's not necessarily by design," he explains, "you’re really and truly trying to do different things. The terror is that you get stuck with people thinking you’re only allowed to do one thing, and so the trick - to me - is I'm interested in a lot of different genres and a lot of different kinds of filmmaking.
"Sometimes I do it well and sometimes I don’t but I enjoy the process. There's something really exciting about being in this position where you can say 'I want to go and make this film and people will make it,'. That doesn't last very long in your career, so while you have all the toys you want to be able to play with them all before they make you put them in the box."
As self aware as any of his Hollywood peers - he possesses every bit as much charm and self deprecation as you suspect he might - he will have been aware that the dramatic weight of recent work might have limited his choices had he not chosen to go a more comedic route this time around.
"After Good Night, And Good Luck and Syriana every film that I was sent to direct was an issue driven film. At some point the issues start to become bigger than the films you’re doing and you really don't want that if you want to direct. I wanted to do a comedy, and if in doing this romantic comedy it was about housing it in something that we haven’t seen before.
"The reason I avoid romantic comedies in general is because we sort of know how everything ends, all the way down. So it’s about where you put it, and is it worth the journey, and do you want to put it in something that will be fun.
"I also want to keep playing with things and keep trying different things and figure out what you're good at and what you're not. I'm a big fan of the old screwball comedies and I thought that without really trying to mimic it, because you couldn't really do it that same way. But we looked at His Girl Friday, and a film called The More The Merrier, with Joel McCrea and Jean Arthur, and of course we ripped off the Philadelphia Story too."
The difference between those films and this one was that the director was pulling double duty as the leading man. For an objective second opinion the man he turned to time and time again was co-producer Grant Heslov.
"He and I co-wrote Good Night, And Good Luck," Clooney nods, "and he produced it. He's been one of my oldest friends, he was 19 and I was 21 when we were in acting class together. He was doing an episode of Joanie Loves Chachi and he loaned me 100 bucks for headshots, so Grant's one of those guys that can look at you and be objective."
What Heslov couldn't do was save his director from the physical challenges inherent in playing ageing football star Dodge Connelly, as Clooney found himself torn between perfectionism and self preservation.
"When you're 46 and you get hit it hurts," he smiles. "You get up and say: 'okay, that's good, we got it,' and you go to the monitor and you're looking at it and as the director you know you’ve got to do it again. But as me, I was like: 'I think we got it!'.
"But Grant is sitting there going: 'back out there and shoot it again,', I’m like 'oh shit!'. It hurts, every once in a while. The first day you’re running 100 yard dashes back and forth and you do it for a couple of days and then you think 'it's only 65 more days of this.'.
"And then there were the 100 yard dashes back and forward to the camera, to check it on the video playback. You don’t want your director to be covered in mud ever really." He wearily smiles that megawatt smile once more, adding: "it’s just not right."
ANWAR BRETT
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