Date of Birth

May 1961, Lexington, Kentucky, USA

Birth Name

George Timothy Clooney

Nickname

Gorgeous George

Height

5′ 11″ (1.80 m)

Spouse

Mini Biography

Born in Lexington, Kentucky, as son of Nick Clooney, a TV newscaster of many years, who hosted a talk show at Cincinnati and often invited George into the studios already at the age of 5. Avoiding competition with his father, he quit his job as broadcast journalist after a short time. Studied a few years at Northern Kentucky University. Failed to join the Cincinnati Reds baseball team. He came to acting when his cousin, Miguel Ferrer, got him a small part in a feature film. After that, he moved to L.A. in 1982 and tried a whole year to get a role while he slept in a friend’s closet. His first movie, together with Charlie Sheen, stayed unreleased but got him the producers’ attention for later contracts.

Trivia

• Best man at the wedding of Richard Kind.
• Tried out for a position on the Cincinnati Reds.
• Waged war against the paparazzi by boycotting “Entertainment Tonight” (1981), the sister show of “Hard Copy” (1989), which had filmed Clooney without his permission.
• Owned a pet pig named Max, given to him by Kelly Preston, for eighteen years. Max died on December 1, 2006.
• Studied acting at The Beverly Hills Playhouse.
• After an accident on the set of his movie Syriana (2005), he suffered from back pain, bad headaches, and memory loss. After several spine surgeries, he fully recovered and is fine now. [October 2005]
• Owns a villa in Laglio at Lake Como, Italy, where he lives several months of the year.
• His famed “Roman haircut” was actually an accident. While filming From Dusk Till Dawn (1996), he wanted to make his character Seth Gecko look really crazy with a chopped off hairstyle. But the haircut became popular and turned into a positive.
• Suffered from Bell’s palsy for a time while he was in high school.
• In December 2006, he traveled to China and Egypt to make a personal plea to Chinese and Egyptian officials to use their ties with the Sudanese government to help stop the violence in the Darfur region.
• In September 2006 he addressed the United Nations Security Council, urging it to act over Darfur.
• Helped celebrate a plan to rebuild a hospital in hurricane-devastated Louisiana alongside former President George Bush [George H. W. Bush]. The pair appeared outside the courthouse in Cameron Parish, the only surviving building in the town following Hurricane Rita. Bush presented local officials with a check for $2 million from the Bush-Clinton Katrina fund. The money will help run South Cameron Memorial Hospital once it has been rebuilt. Former “ER” (1994) star Clooney quipped, “There is good news in all of this, which is that when the hospital gets up and running, I will not be doing any of the medical procedures” (20 December 2006).

Personal Quotes

• Speaking about the 2003 start to the Iraq war: “You can’t beat your enemy anymore through wars; instead you create an entire generation of people revenge-seeking. These days it only matters who’s in charge. Right now that’s us -for a while, at least. Our opponents are going to resort to car bombs and suicide attacks because they have no other way to win. . . . I believe [Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld] thinks this is a war that can be won, but there is no such thing anymore. We can’t beat anyone anymore.”
• “I’m not a snob, I like entertaining films as well. But when you do a film like this, or like Three Kings (1999)-films that get you in a bit of trouble-it’s fun to open up a debate.” [On Good Night, and Good Luck. (2005)]
• “I think, if you listen to the piece, I certainly did not talk about wanting to kill myself. I was talking about the idea of living for years in that kind of pain. Please don’t use my words out of context.” [Responding to media reports that he had contemplated suicide following surgery]
• We’re the ones who talked about AIDS when it was just being whispered. And we talked about civil rights when it wasn’t really popular. This academy - this group of people - gave Hattie McDaniel an Oscar in 1939 when blacks were still sitting in the backs of theaters. I’m proud to be a part of this academy, proud to be part of this community, and proud to be out of touch.
• Asked what makes a man stylish: “For me, a sense of humor is number one. It’s certainly what’s most attractive. It’s not the first thing you notice at 21, but it’s the first thing you notice now. If celebrity is a credit card, I’m using my credit. My job is to try and find ways of talking about issues that move us forward. I don’t make policy, but I can shine a light on faulty or good policy. The Not On Our Watch launch reached more than 9 million people. We need to focus global attention on the plight of the 2.5 million civilians who have fled their homes. Rather than talk about who I’m dating, let’s talk about saving lives.

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