  George Clooney plays an aging and jaded CIA operative in the left-wing political thriller Syriana.
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NEW YORK -- George Clooney is a celebrated Hollywood bachelor and prankster hyped for his easy charm, smooth sensuality and playful wit.
That is precisely why he could enable a liberal message movie like Stephen Gaghan's Syriana, which opens tomorrow. With Clooney on the marquee, Warner Bros. executives felt comfortable greenlighting this dazzlingly complex political thriller about corruption in the oil industry, moral bankrupcy in Washington, confusion in U.S. spy ranks, the rise of China as an economic juggernaut and the making of suicide bombers in the Middle East.
But the celebrity joke is that Clooney is radically transformed. He plays an angry, depressed C.I.A. agent who is also repulsively fat and sweaty. Clooney larded on 30 pounds in 30 days. He shucked his vanity like an oyster. He stripped away charm with caustic acid. Sexy he ain't.
The paradox is delicious, and Clooney, clever lad that he is, is fully aware and ready to exploit his advantage.
"The truth is," the now re-slimmed Clooney says, "you only get a certain amount of time where you can go to Warner Bros. and say: 'Guys, we're going to make a film about oil corruption!' I'm in a position to do things I want to do and you're not going to be in that position for very long."
It is the same reason, he says, that he got away with making his dream project as a filmmaker-actor, the acclaimed new period piece Good Night, And Good Luck. It is a provocative movie that dramatizes the confrontations between respected broadcaster Edward R. Murrow and the fanatic Commie-hunting Senator Joseph McCarthy.
Clooney looks as if he is on a mission and is drawn to films with a social conscience.
"Yes," he says, "but only because I've always been drawn to those movies. I grew up during the civil rights movement, during the women's rights movement, during the Vietnam War movement. I grew up in probably the greatest film time in the history of the world, which is '65 to '75 -- the protest films. I think they're really incredibly entertaining as well.
"The important thing for both of these films (Syriana and Good Night) is that they are entertaining. They're not civics lessons. But yeah, I'm interested in them because they're socially asking questions. But I see nothing wrong with a big fat entertainment either."
The timing of Syriana is intriguing because it plays like current affairs -- today's or even tomorrow's news. And it is being released just as the Bush regime is sagging.
Of course, Clooney & Co. (including producing partner Steven Soderbergh) got this project on track more than two years ago when America was still in the throes of 9/11 nationalism and when Clooney was still being branded a "traitor" for speaking up against the Iraq war.
"I think the fun part, the good part, of the film," says Clooney, "is that it seems to be hitting at exactly the right time where you're allowed to have these debates again. The same with Good Night, And Good Luck."
Debate is the operative word. Clooney, while he has dismissed George W. Bush as "dim" and attacked the war-mongering, says that politically savvy films such as Syriana and Good Night do not lay out a simple agenda.
Especially Syriana, which is constructed like a 16-lane superhighway in which parallel plots race like traffic towards a convergence that might turn into a car wreck. "At least in my opinion," says Clooney, "we're not there to provide answers. But we're there to ask some questions and then let the other guys figure it out."
To ask those questions, he had to bury himself in his character, a fictional field agent and assassin named Bob Barnes (who is loosely based on real-life former C.I.A. agent Bob Baer, whose book See No Evil inspired the film).
To bury himself, Clooney felt compelled to grow a bushy beard and gain those 30 pounds. "I couldn't have done the film (without the weight gain) because the character really needed to fit into the idea that he's not recognizable. He's somebody who slips into the back of the room. And I thought it helped a lot."
Yet Clooney's health suffered, especially when he injured his spinal column in a torture scene. He toppled over accidentally while taped to a chair. "It's a slow process," Clooney says of healing. "It's a long battle. But it's getting better."
The physical trauma added to an already fragile mental state before and during filming. A brother-in-law died of a heart attack. His father lost a Kentucky congressional election. His dog died of a rattlesnake bite. His weight made him sluggish and irritable.
"There were a lot of things," Clooney says now. "It felt like we were having a bad year. But it felt like, creatively, I was having the best year." Another Clooney paradox.
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