Actor Clooney Finds `Evidence’ of Success

Most of us deserve, in our next lives, to be George Clooney. Here is a guy who is handsome and quick-witted. He has a famous family; he also has one of the largest pet pigs in Hollywood.

In a town filled with the semi-employed, he’s even kept working. “The truth is,” Clooney says, “I’m already more successful than I ever thought I would be.”

By his own account, Clooney has done about a dozen pilot films. They range from the glory of “Roseanne” to the agony of the original “Baby Talk.”

Many have been young-hunk roles, but even that has changed. “The last few have gotten away from that teen thing.”

The latest is CBS’ “Bodies of Evidence,” which premieres at 9 tonight on WBBM-Channel 2. Lee Horsley plays the standard cop, honest and lonely. Al Fann plays a rumpled doughnut muncher and Kate McNeil plays a new detective.

Thrown into this is Clooney, with the well-pressed suits. “I have a psychology degree,” he says of the character, “and I’m more sympathetic to criminals.” This is a stretch from his real life, in which academics fizzled.
Clooney had grown up in northern Kentucky, but his family’s fame was on the other side of the river. “In the
microcosm of Cincinnati, I was always Nick Clooney’s son.”

Both his parents had TV talk shows, so he was used to being on camera. Then his dad became a prominant news anchorman.

George Clooney majored in broadcasting at Northern Kentucky University, but his schoolwork was weak. Life changed when his cousin (Miguel Ferrer) and his uncle (Jose Ferrer) were acting in a movie nearby. Clooney took a small role . . . and changed his life.

“I loved it,” he recalls. “I just packed all my belongings and moved out to Hollywood, with $300 in my pocket.”

His aunt, singer Rosemary Clooney, gave him a room for the next year. His parents were angry at him for quitting school, but not at her. “In my family, things always manage to work out.”

Mike Hughes
Gannett News Service
360 words
18 June 1992
Chicago Sun-Times

Clooney stays hot as `Bodies’ grows cold

His “Bodies of Evidence” series will not be on the CBS fall schedule and hopes for its future range from dim to  zilch. But viewers have yet to see the last of George Clooney, son of former KNBC (Channel 4) newscaster Nick Clooney and nephew of singer Rosemary Clooney.

They will, at least, get two looks at him this week, first at 9 p.m. Wednesday when he appears in the NBC movie “Without Warning: Terror in the Towers,” and again at 10 p.m. Friday when “Bodies” presents its final first-run episode with several reruns scheduled to follow. Meanwhile, another series could be on his horizon, this one courtesy of David Letterman, who has taken time out from his leap from NBC to CBS to produce a comedy pilot.

“It’s called `The Building,’ ” Clooney says. “I did it with Bonnie Hunt - from `Grand’ and `Davis Rules’ - and it’s mostly Second City action, very loosely written. If it sells it looks like my character will be a re-occurring one. I’m this kind of strange guy who dumps Bonnie for another woman.”

He is a lot more heroic in “Without Warning,” a quickly assembled movie executive producer Madelon Rosenfeld has based on the Feb. 26 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York City. Work on it was completed in mid-April. “We figured, why wait until the last minute?” Clooney says.

“When I first heard about this I said, `Oh, please!’ But this film is different. It’s not about terrorism. It’s about heroics, people doing things you wouldn’t expect them to do. The director is Alan Levi. He’s worked on `Bodies of Evidence’ and he’s a calm director in situations where there’s no reason to be calm.”

Clooney portrays Kevin Shea, a fireman who was injured at the bombing site. “I didn’t get a chance to talk to him before we did the show, but I did meet him later,” he says. “And no, we’re not alike at all. He looks like a fireman. Compared to him, I look like a chorus boy.”

But filming “Without Warning” was anything but chorus boy stuff, especially during its last three days. “The set was blowing up and I had bricks being thrown at me,” Clooney says. “It was - well, it was eventful.”

“Bodies” has been a lot more peaceful even though it involved his playing a fast-lane bachelor in a police
homicide division. “I’m very sedate and cerebral there,” Clooney says. “There have been no car chases and I
think I’ve fired my gun only twice.”

Clooney says the real problem he had with his character “is that he’s smarter than I am although he’s certainly done some dumb things.”

He was also demoted along the way. In its original form the show was called “Homicide,” a title that eventually went to a short-lived NBC program, and Clooney was a chief detective. That concept didn’t work and the producers wound up bringing in Lee Horsley for the top role while changing the entire cast except for Clooney and Al Fann.

Clooney says he was satisfied with the move and he was especially pleased that “Bodies” gave him his first
“adult” role in a series. “I’m 31 now, so I guess that’s about time.”

Nobody was ever sure how old he was supposed to be in the ill-fated “Baby Talk,” a series Clooney claims he
didn’t enjoy very much. “The writing never did flow.” He was happier as Booker, the factory foreman on
“Roseanne,” but felt he had to leave. “That was nobody’s fault,” he says. “The stuff in the factory just didn’t work.

Besides, I was hired to cover a demographic - 17-25 - that wasn’t needed for that series.”

Bob Sokolsky
The Press-Enterprise
748 words
24 May 1993