Magazine Updates

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Published on Wednesday, January 7th, 2009 | No Comments | Categories Featured Article, magazines | Tags , magazines |

New Scans have been added to the gallery from the 2009 Fabio SALSA, 2008 L’Homme, 2008 Elle Man, 2008 Focus, 2006 GQ (It) and the 1995 New Yorker.

Galleries

Thanks to Lilalucy, Aragarna, Marie and Raphaela for the scans!

Also Thanks to Aragarna for providing a translation of 2008 L’Homme. Where George mentions marriage and kids ….?!?!

A Clooney/Pitt tandem it’s a financial boon for the Coen Brothers, right?
No, no, I can tell you that in their mind the approach is honest! Well, I hope!

With who do you get along best?
I really love to work with Brad Pitt. It’s rare when, on a set, you don’t feel any rivality between the actors, and there it’s the case. Thanks to him and John Malkovitch, this film was really a buddies reunion, which I think appears on screen. And they are two of the greatest actors of today. I’ve rarely seen people investing that much in a rôle.

Isn’t it difficult to maintain an authentical friendship in that job?
No. not at all with Brad. This guy is a cream. Nothing about our work or our careers could change the fact we’re best friends in the world. Let’s face it, today we’ve got only one goal : find great roles w’re proud to invest ourselves in. on the money side now, there is no more competition: we’ve got both enough.

Hey, with Burn After Reading, it’s time to take stock…
really? Tell me!

8 years of collaboration with the Coen Brothers since O Brother in 2008. then there was Intolerable Cruaulty and now Burn After Reading this year. The question is: can they still make a film without you?
Only they could anwser to that. As for me, they taught me almost everything. 9 years ago I was just famous for ER. When the script of O Brother landed on my table, I couldn’t believe it. A role in a Coen movie, could you imagine? Our first encouter was at a producer’s office and I asked Joel why they had chosen me. He was honest enough to answer “you’re our second choice after Pierce Brosnan but he wasn’t available”. That wasn’t a problem for me. I’m even glad that it happened this way with him. We started the right way, no lies. Today I can say I owe them everything. And Soderbergh too…

everything?
Professionally, yes. I consider our collaboration like a master-to-pupil relation. And even father-to-son! We’ve got so many references in common. Same musical tastes, same passion for golden age movies. What I appreciate too is that he considers me as a partner and not only as an actor.

Let’s continue with figures. 40th movie but most importantly 30 years of cinema already since the inefable Return of the Killer Tomatoes in 1988. don’t you feel dizzy?
No, please! Don’t talk about this trashy turkey! Luckily I didn’t have the leading part but at this time I had to eat… but to anwser your question my parents gave me this principle: fight for the future instead of gargle about ancient glory. Today the only thing that matters to me is tomorrow.

Did you become the actor you dreamed to be?
My philosophy is to have the strength to leave, not to arrive. I never had a clear vision of what I wanted to be. I only knew that I wanted to communicate with others, to belong to a team. I couldn’t have done a solitary job like writer or painter. I have a huge need to belong to a group, to listen, answer, share. Ma passion is interaction.

What do you think makes this team spirit and those partners so essential?
You’re never as good as when you have great actors in front of you. They are those who gave you talent. You have to be able to surprise yourself, imagination must always be in action. This is the case with Steven, Brad and John, among others.

You’re a very successful actor. Do you feel this as an extra pressure on the artisitic level?
Being famous is a huge privilege and towards the public it’s a big responsibility to try to present something that’d get everyone’s approuval. But I don’t think you can avoid failures. We’re not machines. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. I guess I got lucky, or good intuition, as you want, but I also had big disappointments in my carreer. And I think we should take it all outright.

After ER you said though that you lived “in the fear of failure and frustration almost all the time”…
today I feel less like a fraud. This idea that something is gonna happen because you shouldn’t be allowed to be so lucky…! it’s a very tough job: you rise very quickly but you can fall in a second. Luckily, with age, you get used to success, and the pressure change.

Did you ever try psychotherapy?
Yes, 15 years ago. I understand pretty well how fame can disturb people who’re not prepared to it.
Honestly, this job can make you crazy. Did you see the madness caused by the arrival of the Ocean’s 13 gang in Cannes? When you’re the object of this madness, it’s to loss common sense… luckily I used prevently the help of shrinks that helped me to put this into perspective and keep my head straight.

An Oscar, a Golden Globes in 2001 for O Brother, lots of rewards in Venice for GN&GL you directed. What does it mean for you? A recognition, a necessity, a purging?
To be recognized by your peers it’s very nice. People tells you “we love you, it’s you we give the medal to”. If I had some, when I was younger, I would have probably been a professional baseball player. Today it makes me pride like a kid who got his second star at skiing.

No question for you now to do small budget movies. Your success seems to have given you a certain standing concerning your productions?
Let’s say that it allowed me to feel the importance of having a very good project. My choices have nothing to do with the budget of the size of the set.

But when you do movies with Stephen Frears, Soderbergh, the Coen Bros and Schumacher, don’t you do films for posterity?
Those great filmmakers are the guarantee of a great professionalism and a great knowledge. I want to be proud of my films and they help me in that. With them I can think of cinema like an art. They are as exceptionnal as a sculpture or a great painter’s work in a museum. I hope my films will cross the ages and will ben seen by several generations. My dream is to be part of the films that will still be watched in 1000 years.

You don’t have any regrets of the 30 years that just passed?
Honestly, there is 1 or 2 films that I’m not necessarily proud of and that I could’ve avoid, like Batman. But who never does any mistake? A mistake that cost me a lot because at that time I refused a project with Scorsese to become the 6th batman of hollywood history. After the fact I realized that I did not wear very well the famous rubber suit, and also that I had probably compromised every chance of any possible project with Scorsese.

And on a more personal level?
It would be disgraceful to complain about my life. So I have no regrets, but I have wishes for the future.

which ones?
find the woman of my dreams and give her 2 or 3 kids. it’s going to be soon the new priority of my life.

Yes, it’s being said in Hollywood that you are effectively looking for the woman of your dreams. You’re said to flirt with all the actress passing by!
(laughing) God, you told you such a thing?

JLO, Teri Hatcher, Cameron Diaz, Nathalie Portman, Keira Knightley… I go on?
(laughing)al least they are always very pretty, and if it was true, I’ve got good taste! Nevertheless, if being smiling, thoughfull, polite with women means flirt, it would happened at least 200 times a day! No really, I can admit I’m charming but I’m not a womanizer. And this word “womanizer”, it has a connotation of teaser, collector, sex maniac, that I’m not at all and that I find actually really reprehensible.

Still you like to be told you are the new Cary Grant. The classiest of all the Hollywood actors…
let’s say that, since I take care of myself and how I look, I appreciate when people see it! Even if I don’t spend all my time checking my weight or trying on clothes. That said, this image of a very decent guy is gonna take a knock with the movie I’m currently filming where I have long hair, a bad moustache and a 8 days beard!

You’re an unwilling seducer
I hope so, I have bet a lot on that for several years! Seduction is in my own culture, in my roots. When I’m among a bunch of guys and a lady shows up, I immediately change my attitude. I’m more gentle and I let my feminine side talks. I feel the need to charm, it’s like an animal instinct, but that doesn’t prevent being discrete and modest.

Your seduction is based a lot on your elegancy…
for some it’s a quality, for others it’s a defect. It’s why I like when you say I’m “Cary Grant’s spiritual son”. Frankly, it’s the best compliment you can give me. And you know, I feel more comfortable, more me, more appealing with a beautiful dark blue suit and a white musketeer-wrist shirt, and clean shaved than with destroy jeans and dirty hair… I’m quite old fashion about that.

On a dressing level, what’s for you the difference between day and night?
Per se, night allows more extravangance, but that’s not for me. I’ve always prefered draw attention on my personality, my sense of humor, my chat than on excentric clothes that catch theeyes. If you had a look in my dressing, you would have the feeling to see 20 times the same suit, dark for winter, clear for summer, and 50 times the same shirt. So my dressing personnality doesn’t change much between days and nights.

What outward signs of wealth are you more proud of?
I don’t thing I someone who conspicuously displays what he earns. It’s not the education I got. Though, it’s very nice to be able to spend your money without counting, to buy whatever you like not worrying about what your banker is gonna say. Apart from my houses in LA and also in Laglio, Italie, on the ridge of the Lake Como, I’m a person whose pleasures stayed simple. I’m all but a high roller.

And how is your health?
I’m touching wood, everything’s fine. I just have a fragile liver and I have to be careful with sugar because there is diabetes in the family. Otherwise, you want me to show you the last check-up, my last blood tap?… (laughs)

no it’s ok, thanks. We just want you to stay the most joyfull and smiling of american actors.
What do you want, most of my collegues think they are much more appealing no opening their mouth and being sulking all the time. It is said to give them a dark, romantique and innaccessible side. For me, it’s all the contrary and I think all my charm is in my smile. So I use it.. the avantage is that I’ve never been said to be pretentious. I’ve all been said that as high as you can be you’re still sat on your bottom. And I confirm.

Interview by Christophe Combarieu. L’Homme Magazine, december 2008.
translation by Aragarna…