The Sunday Times - UK (2021-11-28)

T

hree years ago George Clooney

was in a motorbike crash that

could have killed him. “I was

waiting for my switch to turn

off,” he says. He was in Sar-

dinia, going at 75mph, when a

car turned in front of him and he flew

over the handlebars. Groggy, lying on

the ground and screaming, he realised

a crowd was gathering — he was being

filmed by people on their phones.

“I’m fine now,” he smiles, beaming

and relaxing on a hotel terrace in

London lit with winter sun. He turned

60 in May and his trademark salt-and-

pepper hair and beard are now mainly

salt. Hollywood’s most charismatic

superstar is over to discuss his eighth

film as a director, The Tender Bar. But

that narrow squeak in Italy, when he

lay stricken while people filmed him

like it was just another movie set, has

left its mark.

“If you’re in the public eye,” he

says, “what you realise when you’re

on the ground thinking it’s the last

minute of your life is that, for some

people, it’s just going to be entertain-

ment for their Facebook page. I’m a

pretty positive guy, but that told me —

clearly — that you really are here just

for their entertainment.”

Lamenting an age when some

people’s first thoughts on seeing an

injured man is to shoot them for social

media “likes”, he adds: “You want to

take every one and shake them!”

Such are the circles that Clooney

moves in, he tells of doing a fundraiser

COVER STORY

‘I WAS ON THE

GROUND THINKING

IT’S THE LAST

MINUTE OF MY LIFE’

After surviving a horrific motorbike crash, turning 60

and spending lockdown with his children, George Clooney

faced up to his own mortality. In a revealing interview

he talks fame, failure — and his future

for Barack Obama: “Everyone was film-

ing. I said, ‘They can’t say they met the

president — they filmed it.’ People are

living their lives this way and I fight

against it. If my kids do something cute,

I want to take a picture, but I have to

say, ‘Be in the moment — you don’t

have to record everything.’ ”

Clooney is a charmer like no other.

Casually dressed in jeans and a T-shirt,

he greets me with a tap on the shoulder,

like an old friend — we had met once

before, he probably doesn’t remember.

He is a man who makes people feel com-

fortable in their own skin, Hollywood’s

equivalent of moisturiser. He’s as easy

talking about his friend Joe Biden’s

“crappy couple of months” as he is

about his own domestic bliss, or Holly-

wood since the disgracing of Harvey

Weinstein.

Clooney spent the pandemic in Los

Angeles, where, for a year, it was just

JONATHAN

DEAN

INTERVIEW

him and Amal, his British-Lebanese

barrister wife, and their four-year-old

twins, Alexander and Ella. “I felt like

my mother in 1964, doing three loads

of laundry a day,” he says, giggling.

“But we were all together — and I cer-

tainly didn’t get that from my folks.

There’s got to be something good that

comes out of that?” He likes the fact that

his kids have learnt to read so young.

“I’m from Kentucky,” he says with a

laugh. “I was 12 when I could read!”

Earlier this year he finished direct-

ing The Tender Bar, based on a memoir

GEORGE

CLOONEY’S

TOP 10 FILM

ROLES

The stars are space and

Sandra Bullock, sure,

but Clooney’s astronaut

is also key to Alfonso

Cuarón’s special

effects-laden

intergalactic

blockbuster. He is,

frankly, one of the

few actors you’d happily

be stranded with.

Clooney’s most political film, made

during the George W Bush era, won

him an Oscar — the

story is about who

owns what oil

around the

world and

how it is

connected to

various deaths

and miseries.

GRAVITY (2013) SYRIANA (2005)

10

CLAIRE FOLGER/AMAZON

9 8

In this post-Gulf war romp

Clooney leads a team of

soldiers searching for gold.

Made by the cantankerous

David O Russell, the whole film

sizzles with tension and delivers

the sort of questioning of

America

that

Clooney

loves.

THREE KINGS (1999)

4 28 November 2021