George Timothy Clooney (born May 6, 1961) is an American actor, film director, producer, and screenwriter. Clooney has balanced his performances in big-budget blockbusters with work as a producer and director behind commercially riskier projects, as well as social and liberal political activism. On January 31, 2008, the United Nations named Clooney a "Messenger of Peace."
Early life
Clooney was born in Lexington, Kentucky. His mother, Nina Bruce (née Warren), was a former pageant queen; his father, Nick, is a journalist, anchorman, game show, and American Movie Classics host, and an aspiring politician from the state of Kentucky. Clooney was raised in an Irish Catholic family. He has an older sister, Adelia (also known as Ada), and his cousins include actors Miguel and Rafael Ferrer, who are the sons of his aunt, singer Rosemary Clooney, and actor José Ferrer. He is also related to another singer, Debby Boone, who married José and Rosemary's son, Gabriel Ferrer. From an early age, Clooney would hang around his father's sets, often participating in shows, where he proved to be a crowd favorite.
Clooney began his education at the Blessed Sacrament School in Fort Mitchell, Kentucky. Spending part of his childhood in Ohio, he attended St. Michael's School in Columbus, St. Susanna School in Mason, Ohio. In middle school, Clooney developed Bell's palsy, a debilitating condition that partially paralyzes the face. The malady went away within a year. "That was the worst time of my life," he told the Mirror in 2003. "You know how cruel kids can be. I was mocked and taunted, but the experience made me stronger."
His parents eventually moved to Augusta, Kentucky, where Clooney attended Augusta High School. He has stated that he earned all As and a B in school, and was an enthusiastic baseball and basketball player. He had considered a career in Law at this time, but later retracted. He tried out with the Cincinnati Reds in 1977 to play professional baseball, but was not offered a contract. He did not pass the first round of player cuts. He attended Northern Kentucky University from 1979 to 1981 and, very briefly, the University of Cincinnati, but did not graduate from either. He had such odd jobs as selling mens' suits and cutting tobacco.
Career
Early roles
His first major role came in 1984 in the sitcom E/R (not be confused with ER , which was a decade later). He played a handyman on the series The Facts of Life . He played Bobby the detective on one episode of The Golden Girls . His first significant break was a semi-regular supporting role in the sitcom Roseanne , playing Roseanne Barr's overbearing boss Booker Brooks, followed by the role of a construction worker on Baby Talk and then as a sexy detective on Sisters . In 1988, Clooney also played a role in Return of the Killer Tomatoes .
Initial success
Clooney achieved stardom when he was selected to play Dr. Doug Ross, opposite Anthony Edwards's and Noah Wyle's character on the hit NBC drama ER from 1994 to 1999 and returned for a guest spot in the show's 15th and final season. Clooney was also partnered with Deborah Leoni in their production company Mirador Entertainment.
Clooney began in movies while appearing in ER , his first major Hollywood role being From Dusk till Dawn , directed by Robert Rodriguez. He followed its success with One Fine Day with Michelle Pfeiffer and The Peacemaker with Nicole Kidman, the latter being the initial feature length release from Dreamworks SKG studio. Clooney was then cast as the new Batman (succeeding Val Kilmer, who in turn, had succeeded Michael Keaton) in Batman & Robin , which was a moderate box office success, but a critical failure (with Clooney himself calling the film "a waste of money"). In 1998, he starred in Out of Sight , opposite Jennifer Lopez. This was the first of many collaborations with director Steven Soderbergh. He also starred in Three Kings during the last weeks of his contract with ER .
In 1999, Clooney left the cast of ER to pursue his film career, returning only for two cameo appearances in the 6th and again in its 15th and final season.
Movie career
After leaving ER , Clooney starred in major Hollywood successes, such as The Perfect Storm and O Brother, Where Art Thou? . In 2001, he teamed up with Soderbergh again for Ocean's Eleven , a remake of the 1960s Rat Pack film of the same name. To this day, it remains Clooney's most commercially successful movie, earning more than $444 million worldwide. The film spawned two sequels starring Clooney, Ocean's Twelve in 2004 and Ocean's Thirteen in 2007. In 2001, Clooney founded the production studio Section Eight with Steven Soderbergh. Clooney is generally considered Chief Actor.
He made his directorial debut in the 2002 film Confessions of a Dangerous Mind , an adaptation of the autobiography of TV producer Chuck Barris. Though the movie didn't do well at the box office, Clooney's direction was praised among critics and audiences alike.
In 2005, Clooney starred in Syriana , which was based loosely on former Central Intelligence Agency agent Robert Baer and his memoirs of being an agent in the Middle East. The same year he directed, produced, and starred in Good Night, and Good Luck. , a film about 1950s television journalist Edward R. Murrow's famous war of words with Senator Joseph McCarthy. Both films received critical acclaim and decent box-office returns despite being in limited release. At the 2006 Academy Awards, Clooney was nominated for Best Director and Best Original Screenplay for Good Night, and Good Luck , as well as Best Supporting Actor for Syriana . He became the first person in Oscar history to be nominated for directing one movie and acting in another in the same year. He would go on to win for his role in Syriana .
Clooney appeared in The Good German , a film-noir directed by Soderbergh. The film is set in post-World War II Germany.
Clooney also received the American Cinematheque Award in October 2006, an award that honors an artist in the entertainment industry who has made "a significant contribution to the art of motion pictures". On January 22, 2008, Clooney was nominated for Best Actor for his role in Michael Clayton , but lost to Daniel Day-Lewis for There Will Be Blood .
After the success of Good Night, and Good Luck , Clooney said he planned to devote more of his energy to directing. He said that the directing industry is "a great industry to grow old in." Clooney directed the film Leatherheads , in which he also stars. Clooney is self-deprecating in interviews, telling STV in April 2008 that Leatherheads , one of his lightest movies, is a "cry for peace." In the same interview, when asked about reconciling George Clooney the actor and George Clooney the director, he said "there's a lot of ego there... so I just take it out on the actors."
Clooney next co-starred with Ewan McGregor and Kevin Spacey in The Men Who Stare At Goats , which was directed by his friend Grant Heslov and released in November 2009. Also in 2009, Clooney will star in Up in the Air , set for a December release. It was directed by Juno helmer Jason Reitman.
Clooney is represented by Bryan Lourd, Co-Chairman of Creative Artists Agency (CAA).
Other ventures
South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker, invited Clooney to play a role in the show as the voice of Stan Marsh's gay dog Sparky in the episode "Big Gay Al's Big Gay Boat Ride", a role with no dialogue except normal dog noises. He later appeared in the film South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut . Despite their history, the show's creators, Parker and Stone, lampooned Clooney for his outspoken political views in their feature film Team America: World Police . However, Clooney later said that he would have been offended if he hadn't been made fun of in the film. He was also mentioned in the episode "Smug Alert!", which mocks his acceptance speech at the 78th Academy Awards.
On July 8, 2005, news reports said that Clooney would be working with Cindy Crawford's husband Rande Gerber to design and build a new casino hotel in Las Vegas. On August 29, the same year, Clooney officially announced his involvement with the Las Ramblas Resort project. However, the project never came to fruition, and the property on which the resort was to be built was sold in June 2006.
After serving as pitchman outside the US for products like Fiat, Nespresso and Martini vermouth, Clooney lent his voice to a series of Budweiser ads beginning in 2005 (which were still running as of September 2007). In September 2007, Clooney defended his work when asked by an Italian journalist, Alex Meenehan, how he reconciled advertising multinational companies' products with the purpose of Michael Clayton, the film he was currently introducing in the Venice Films Festival.
In August 2006, Clooney and Grant Heslov started a new company: Smokehouse Pictures . Heslov was the president of television at
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