By George!

Ervell E. Menezes on George Clooney who has been in films for a decade and even today is one of Hollywood’s most sought after actors

Voted the Sexiest Man Alive by People’s magazine last year is no small honour for George Clooney and that too after being only a decade in films. But this nephew of singer-actress Rosemary Clooney (he was pall-bearer for her funeral) has been able to forge a sort of unique persona, rugged yet dignified, humorous yet steely to become one of Hollywood’s most sought actors today.

Cast as a gangster seven times, including the three Oceans — Eleven, Twelve and Thirteen — and a soldier four times, Clooney will long be remembered for his role as the leader of the gang Danny Ocean, even if he has more sensitive performances to his credit, like for example One Fine Day alongside Michelle Pfeiffer. It is like Bruce Willis being known specially for his Die Hard roles.

As for Ocean’s gang (Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Andy Garcia and Co), they had gone their separate ways after Ocean’s Twelve. That camaraderie is so strong that it brings them together again.

"I have always embraced the idea that these guys are thieves and conmen but they’re not entirely driven by money. Certainly, in this case, they are driven by friendship and revenge. The ‘all for one and one for all’ ethos dictates that when one of them is betrayed — especially the way that their friend Reuben (Elliott Gould) was betrayed — it’s payback time. It seemed like a strong premise," says Ocean director Steven Soderbergh.

Born in Lexington, Kentucky on May 6,1961, as a son of Nick Clooney, a TV newscaster of many years, who hosted a talk show at Cincinnati and often invited George, then five, into the studios. Avoiding competition with his dad, he quit his job as a broadcast journalist after a brief stint.

After studying a few years Northern Kentucky University, he failed to get into the Cincinnati Reds baseball team and came into acting when his cousin Miguel Ferrer (son of the famed Mel Ferrer) got him a small part in a feature film that was never released. Charlie Sheen too was in the film. But the attention he got was able to take him a long way in the film industry and that is saying a lot for his talent.

In One Fine Day, he and Michelle Pfeiffer play two busy single parents who fall in love when they meet at their children’s outings and that includes a bat cruise. It is a subject very close to Jean-Louis Trintignant and Anouk Aimee in Claude Lelouch immortal French film A Man and a Woman with soothing background music by Francis Lai. Then around the same time he did an excellent job as a soldier in The Peacemaker, two contrasting part which brought out his versatility. Since then a right blend of good looks and talent has taken him miles and miles.

But it has not always been smooth-sailing for this strong-minded young man who during the shooting of Three Kings (Mel Gibson and Nicholas Cage were the other two) reportedly got into a fist-fight with director David O. Russell who vowed not to make another film with him even if he were offered $20 million.

When Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002) bombed, he said "but I can take it. Most of my films haven’t done particularly well. I’m surprised I’m continuing to work." It was perhaps the success of Ocean’s Eleven that probably cemented his career as an actor. "It was the easiest shoot ever," he says and goes on to elucidate: "Steven Soderbergh was in hell because it was really a complicated film to put together. We were like. We’re in Las Vegas, we go to work one afternoon and we gotta be done by six at night. Six hours work. Steven was editing all night."

Clooney was once married to Talia Balsam, daughter of Martin Balsam and one of his closest friends is Mark Wahlberg but for all his outgoing life style he is quite a private person and he surely has a nice way of saying it. "I don’t like to share my personal life. It would not be personal if I share it." May be some of our Bollywood stars could take a cue from him.

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