Fifty, fabulous and ready for road

GEORGE Clooney has nothing to prove as an actor and he knows it.

It’s part of what makes him such a pleasant and relaxed interviewee, quick with the self-effacing jokes, interested in the wider world beyond where he now sits, at home in his own skin.

At 50, he is ageing beautifully and has more mischief in him than people half his age. If all the charm, the intelligence, the wit and the chivalry is an act — which, after interviewing him six times, I don’t believe it is — it’s a damn good one. What you see with George Timothy Clooney is what you get.

“I’m not out trying to prove anything. I’m sort of finished with that, so I get to play in other sandboxes and try and figure out what I like and I’m interested in,” he says. “When my aunt Rosemary said later in her life she could sing better than ever, even though she could no longer hit or reach every note, she said to me that she was a better singer then because she didn’t have to prove anything and she could relax. I sort of feel the same.”

Clooney appears to be getting cooler and more relaxed with age. Take his wheels, for example; these days, he’d rather the comfort of a minivan over a sports car and his nonchalance has a way of making that cool, too.

“In LA, I have two cars and two motorcycles. In Italy, I have three motorcycles because other people want to ride, and you can’t ride them all at the same time. When you’re young, you’re into sports cars and shit like that and it really does matter. But now, in Italy, we pull up to the Villa d’Este Hotel and I’m in a minivan. I lost all my cool — straight out the window,” he says. “After a while, you just want transportation and things like cool cars or motorcycles are all about getting attention. I get all the attention I could ever need, so I kind of like being in a minivan and people not paying so much attention to me.”

Clooney tells me that he is coming to Ireland next April on his Harley-Davidson to take that long-promised but often-postponed road trip.

“I was talking to Bono recently and he advised me about some great routes to take, so I’m finally going to get there next April,” he says.

Growing up the son of respected journalist and broadcaster, Nick Clooney, formed much of the character that makes George Clooney the man he is today. Seeing celebrity up close through his father and his singer aunt, Rosemary, made him recognise early on the traps of fame, but it also imbued in him the sense of justice and fairness which have led him to become involved in political issues.

“My father was, and is, a great journalist. Thirty years ago, I was studying broadcasting in college and the problem was I wasn’t nearly as good as my father. I wasn’t as quick or as smart as my old man and I realised it would be a long time before I was ever going to be and I decided to do something else. My uncle was Jose Ferrer, the actor, and he got me a part as an extra in a movie he was in. After that, I got in my ‘76 Monte Carlo and drove to LA to be an actor and I got lucky, quite honestly.

“My parents were disappointed I didn’t finish college and they were really upset when I went to Hollywood to become an actor. I was a big disappointment to them. My father used to write me long letters for about seven or eight years, which I still have, where he used to say, “Knock this off and get a real job.’ That was the first time they felt ashamed of me. But we are really close.

“I’ve been lucky to be in a few films that will last. I’ve made some turkeys along the way, some dumb choices but, luckily, that was early in my career when people weren’t paying attention,” he says.

Using his fame as leverage for creating awareness about political issues is one of the ways in which he evens out the toll of living in the glare of publicity.

“Probably the thing I am most proud of was being involved in places and issues that might not otherwise have got their voices heard. I have all this attention on me that I’ve been able to deflect to Darfur and south Sudan and to people who could use it. The telethons and the things like that we’ve been able to put together, I’m proud of these things and being able to take something that’s going well for you and deflect it on to other people. Those are real successes.

“I have a lot of things I want to get done and I don’t really have a lot of time. The best advice my aunt Rosemary gave me was, ‘Don’t wake up at 65 and say what you should have done’. I think that’s a smart piece of advice. She also told me never to mix wine and vodka and that’s a lesson I forgot to take last night,” he grins.

Given the fact that he hit the half-century mark in May, has he given any thought to plans for after his death?

“I tried to donate my liver, but no-one would take it. Imagine how disappointed I was. We have a thing in the US, where you check a box on your driver’s licence to donate an organ. I really think it should be the other way around. I think you should automatically donate your organs because that would turn the balance of organ donation in a huge way. I would donate whatever anybody would take and I’d probably do the cremation bit. I don’t really like the idea of getting stuck in a box.

“I have these best friends of mine, I put them all in my will and I said I would give them each some ashes and some money and have them take me on a trip somewhere I’ve never seen before. It wouldn’t be such a bad way to see the world,” he says.

Clooney’s love life and the seemingly never-ending succession of 20-something girlfriends is a staple of the tabloids. He has already replaced his Italian girlfriend of two years standing, Elisabetta Canellis, with a newer model, Stacy Keibler, 31, a wrestler-turned-model. When I try to wrestle a comment out of him about his latest flame, he pounces.

“I knew it was coming,” he says. “Some of the sneaky questions about this topic are often disguised in serious questions like, ‘This thing in Darfur is so sad with these children’ and you go, ‘Oh yes’ and then they go ‘have you ever wanted to have children?’ They think if you sneak it through the serious stuff, I’ve got to answer.

“I’ve found that answering these questions has never been beneficial to me in any way. It’s beneficial to people selling magazines and newspapers but not to me, so I always avoid them.”

* The Ides of March opens nationwide on October 28