George Clooney (Handout)

It isn't easy being George Clooney. The movie star could run for president, climb Mount Everest, achieve world peace or cure cancer, and people would still only ask him who he's dating.

When he's getting married? Having children? Stuff like that.

Clooney, 50, was in Toronto for a few days in September during the film festival, smiling and charming his way through interviews and press conferences for two different movies. He directed and stars in The Ides of March, a tale of political corruption now in theatres; he also stars in The Descendants, a family drama directed by Alexander Payne that opens in Toronto Friday and elsewhere across Canada on Nov. 25.

In The Descendants, he plays Matt King, a landowner in Hawaii who has to step up and be a parent after his wife is hurt in a boating accident. He has to reconnect with his two daughters and make difficult decisions about a huge swath of land owned by his family.

Word has it the role and his performance will win him an Oscar nomination. (Clooney already made Oscar history in 2005 when he was nominated both for directing Good Night and Good Luck and for acting in Syriana. He won for the latter.)

"When I die, they'll say Oscar winner, it's a great thing to have on your tombstone. But after that, it's about, ah, I really like it when people appreciate the work. I enjoy good reviews more than bad reviews and I enjoy people celebrating the work, but I really don't have this dying need to collect things," says the actor. "I'm very thankful, but I don't remember who won the Oscar four years ago or five years ago. Which film or which director -- I don't remember awards. I remember movies."

Clooney's own memorable movies are legion and include Up in the Air, Burn After Reading, The Men Who Stare at Goats, Ocean's Eleven, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Three Kings, Out of Sight, and dozens more. He's won the Oscars and the Golden Globes and the everything else and he's been People magazine's Sexiest Man alive -- twice. But Clooney was in his 30s before he won any sort of acclaim as an actor, which he thinks saved him from being overwhelmed by fame. The actor was part of a zillion TV series that went nowhere before his role in ER changed his life. Always self-deprecating, he attributes his career path to luck.

"You think of yourself as a film actor who just happened to be doing a TV show, in the middle of a great film career -- that I actually wasn't having," he jokes about his early career. Lest we forget, the Kentucky native had a role in Attack of the Killer Tomatoes! Yes, really.

"There's that period of time when you're just trying to get a job. And then, you get lucky," he says, explaining some of the factors that allowed television's ER to draw an immense viewing audience of between 35 and 40 million viewers. "So I went from obscurity to being able to get a film. I wasn't able to audition a lot, so that was luck. And then things change, and then you have to take responsibility for the roles, because you're going to be held responsible for them, because your name is above the title. I got some great lessons in some not so great films."

Clooney, who is a writer and producer, became a feature director in 2002 with Confessions of a Dangerous Mind. Directing, he says, has been his career path for a decade. "My day job is acting. That's how I make my living. But directing is what I really want to do and enjoy doing. In between, I'm lucky enough to work with Alexander Payne or Steven Soderbergh, the Coen Brothers, Jason Reitman and really good directors."

Although his friend Brad Pitt recently announced he can see an end to his own acting career, Clooney has different goals.

"I want to do projects that last longer than 15 minutes," he states. "When they do that thing for you when you're 75, and in a wheelchair with the colostomy bag, you don't want them to say, 'Oh, you had 20 films that opened at No. 1!' Who gives a s---? Honestly, it's an art form that costs millions and millions so I understand that they have to make money, but truly, I want to do things people remember. And if you can do five or 10 of those in your life that last, then you win.

"Unless somebody steps on your colostomy bag."

liz.braun@sunmedia.ca

 

More Artists