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

(EriveltonMoraes) #1

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

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