It’s hard work portraying an effortless performance

Being George Clooney in a George Clooney movie is a wise place to start if you are George Clooney. A crushingly obvious truth, I suppose. But a rarely understood aspect of movie-star acting is range — and that an actor may appreciate his own range and use it to his advantage is even less understood, which (thus far) has saved us from Clooney as Hamlet or Willy Loman. Instead, we get that stoic brow, those bedroom eyes, the constant hint of a smirk and an effortless cool. He may veer an inch toward gravitas, or an inch toward silliness, but he’s always within a narrow range.

Which, on Sunday, makes the Oscar race for best actor a competition laced with a few awkward truths.

One of which is that Academy Award voters prefer disguises, raw bluster and a certain naked emotional untidiness — and, generally, neither Clooney nor his competition, Jeff Bridges (whom conventional wisdom has pegged to win), offer much in the way of ostentatious. What they offer, again and again, is themselves, in minutely varying degrees. Bridges, 60, has more range than Clooney, 48, as well as more than a decade of experience on him. What they share, though, is that rather than disappear into characters, both use the illusion that the line between their roles and themselves is nonexistent.

So, we see a Clooney movie or a Bridges movie, and, once again, they’re “playing themselves.”

But does it really matter which movie a movie star like Bridges or Clooney receives an Oscar for? Clooney won a supporting actor Oscar for “Syriana,” and Bridges may well win for “Crazy Heart” — clearly voters require at minimum a gut and an unkempt beard before they can be convinced that real acting is occurring. But neither role is that far afield for either actor. They give good performances and bad performances like any other actor, but when a star makes a career of playing himself, can we really separate those performances anyway?

“He just plays himself “: There’s often a wallop of contempt in that charge, lobbed by contemporary audiences at stars with the implication that an actor has grown lazy. But it conveniently ignores that big movie stars intend a degree of repetition, and that the savviest want audiences to believe they know them, not as actors but people. It’s also a charge that forgets what makes movies work, and that good actors who happen to be stars have an uncanny understanding of the pros and cons of playing themselves.

The Golden Age of Hollywood’s studio system treated contract players as specific brands and assigned them a narrow range, thereby giving audiences what was expected. What it allowed a strong personality to do was create his own reality, which is what Clooney and Bridges do. It’s what Cary Grant did, and Tom Cruise does, and James Cagney did, and Julia Roberts does.

The con to a ready-to-go movie persona is the same as the pro: An actor can fall back on it. When they stop offering anything fresh, it’s a liability. The uncomfortable truth is that some of the best never give a strenuous performance.

And we want to see strain, as do award voters, but it’s not fair. That lack of sweat is what has hindered Bridges and Clooney; it’s why we don’t consider them the equal of Meryl Streep or Philip Seymour Hoffman. They don’t work to win our affection. But because they have less room to play in, and because they rarely coast in the narrow range allowed, they do cut deeper and get closer, and, illusion or not, we know them.

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Vera Farmiga says it would be ”impossible” for an actress not to have chemistry with George Clooney, who she stars with in ‘Up In The Air’.

George Clooney has “chemistry” with all his female co-stars.

The Hollywood hunk – who appears alongside Anna Kendrick and Vera Farmiga in ‘Up In The Air’ – has an automatic connection with all of his screen lovers, who can’t help but be attracted to him.

Vera – who plays his screen lover Alex – said: “I’ll tell you, it’s impossible not to have chemistry with George Clooney.

“He’s a goofball. He’s a clown. It’s just so good to be in his presence, and as a scene partner, anything goes. It’s a real circus with him on set. It’s carefree and loving and warm.”

Vera’s colleague Anna – who portrays businesswoman Natalie – has also spoken out about George’s flirtatious ways, admitting she was initially “terrified” of him but he soon put her at ease.

She told Empire magazine: “During the camera test he was making fun of my hair. If it was anybody else that you’d just met, you’d be like, ‘What’s this guy’s problem?’ But it’s George Clooney. Obviously, he is really intimidating as a sort of iconic figure. Really terrifying.

“Then the second that you meet him properly, you know you’re going to feel that he’s a normal guy in a matter of days. He is one of the most famous people on the planet, but he has a real talent for making you feel like you’ve known him forever.”

Source

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29 George Clooney (CAA)

• Estimated 2009 earnings: $22 million
  • $10 million: Up in the Air (fee for starring)
  • $5 million: Fees for appearing in foreign commercials, royalties from older films, other revenue
  • $4.5 million: The Men Who Stare at Goats (back end, based on worldwide gross of $44 million; Clooney took no up-front fee, but got a now-rare first-dollar gross deal)
  • $2.5 million: The American (fee for starring in and producing upcoming spy thriller)

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EW: At the same time, I  haven’t seen one interview with you [George] for this movie.

Clooney: It’s closing in on two years since I’ve really done any interviews. Leatherheads bombed.  And what occurred to me is that I did everything.  I did the whistle-stop tour.  What you realize is, when you’re at a certain place in your career where people know you, it’s not like you have to get known. I don’t want to be more famous. You realize that movies are going to be successful or not based on the trailer and how it’s sold and what people’s perception of the movie is. No amount of going out there and trying to be funny on a talk show or doing covers of magazines is going to make a difference.  I don’t believe that’s true for actors who are making their name.  But once you get to that place, I find it to be sort of soul stealing.

EW: But then you just end up getting stupid questions on red carpets and marriage proposals at press conferences.  At some point, don’t you want an avenue to discuss your work intelligently?

George: I’ll do red carpets, but I’m not going to do the press conferences anymore.  You focus on a few smart interviews and try to do them every once in a while and make them hard to get.

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“Jason came to my house and brought the script and I read it,” Clooney says.

“There were some things that sounded like they were taken from a Barbara Walters special that I had done. I’m not completely unaware of people’s perceptions of me. I sort of felt like, if you were ever going to deal with it, this is probably the best way to do it and the best person to do it with. If you can’t point at what people think are your shortcomings, then you’re boxing yourself in.”

Here’s the portion of the Variety Article concerning George and you can catch the complete article on the Variety website here.

Even well-known marquee thesps like George Clooney face similar issues. In this year’s “Up in the Air,” Clooney plays a suave, lifelong bachelor who jet-sets across the country lounging in chic hotels. As the actor himself exhibits all these qualities in real life, viewers can’t help but wonder how much he is simply playing himself. Yet in Clooney’s case, as a major star, that similarity may well have its advantages.

While Jack Nicholson may have nabbed a nomination for a performance in which he strikingly de-emphasized his signature rakish charm (“About Schmidt”), he won for “As Good as It Gets,” in which he channeled that charm and recontextualized it into something new and strange. And last year, Mickey Rourke secured a nomination for a role that not only hinged on a priori knowledge of his personal life, it practically seemed to mirror and comment upon it.

For Clooney, the fact that his performance ultimately explores the loneliness and alienation inherent in a lifestyle similar to his own may improve its stature with voters. Whether that’s fair or not is an open question. Should performances be judged in a vacuum?

Perhaps. Or perhaps an actor’s public persona (or lack thereof) is simply another tool to wield. Perhaps Sidibe has learned to utilize her disarming ordinariness just as cannily as Clooney flashes his devil-may-care grin. That’s the thing about great actors — you can’t always tell when they’re on.

Thanks to Nelly, Carol and Sara for the headsup!

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Wenn is reporting that Parade Magazine has released 2009 honours list and George has topped two of it’s readers polls.  Coming in with 40% George claims the “Gets better with age” spot and with 56% George is most likely the one to be kissed under the mistletoe.

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Clark Gable dominated the ’30s; Gary Cooper, the early ’40s. Then Humphrey Bogart began his great run a couple of years later, bringing his cynical yet idealistic vision of American manhood to the screen.

In recent years, we’ve had Kevin Costner, who in the early 1990s evoked Gary Cooper, followed in the second half of that decade by Tom Hanks, whose loquaciousness, irritability and average-man integrity reminded some people of James Stewart.

These are actors who, for a time, embodied America’s idea of itself. You look at them, and you understand where the mind of the country was, what its values were, what men were like, and what people thought men were supposed to be. At various times in our history, others have worn the mantle: Stewart, John Wayne, Henry Fonda, Paul Newman, Robert Redford …

Today’s American Actor is George Clooney.

He has dominated this decade, ever since 9/11 signaled a change in consciousness. In one day, our movies stopped longing for some mythic time when men were men (the Old West, World War II) and became focused on today. “Ocean’s Eleven,” released just three months after 9/11, was a remake of a Rat Pack film and intended to evoke an earlier era. But in Clooney, the movie showed something modern – a hero who understood that a punch in the nose wasn’t going to do it anymore, that he needed a crafty response to complex difficulty.

It’s funny that Clooney is often compared to old-time stars such as Gable or Cary Grant. Yes, he’s a bona fide movie star, so in that way he’s classic, but the consciousness is pure 21st century: ironic, self-mocking and skeptical of authority. The Clooney hero is breezy yet pessimistic, an upbeat personality too smart not to be worried, and too realistic to be completely sure of himself.

This is not a personality that would have made sense in the classic era. If there’s any doubt, check out Clooney in “The Good German,” in which he plays an American journalist in the aftermath of World War II. Clooney seems lost in the film. He is a modern man who doesn’t translate into an earlier hero context.

Interestingly, Clooney doesn’t seem to be trying to be the American Actor. It’s just sort of happening, the result of his pursuing stories that interest him – and using his power to get those movies made. Often he does this by taking his money as a percentage off the back end, guaranteeing that if the movie bombs, the producers won’t have to cough up a huge fee.

I think Costner did try to become the American Actor, and as soon as he started trying, he and his films became self-conscious. Clooney has it easier. His image has nothing to do with any abstract notion of nobility, and his ability to laugh at himself suggests a healthy, grounded ego. Remember that funny scene in “Ocean’s Twelve” in which Ocean (Clooney) becomes outraged that people think he’s 50? Clooney was 43 at the time, and it’s hard to imagine another leading man relishing a moment like that.

At his best – “Michael Clayton” and “Up in the Air” – Clooney plays men who start out with certain expectations and are thrown off their game. In a way, you can say the same about every screen hero, from Gable to Hanks and all stops between. The differences are a matter of style, in the nature of those expectations and in the hero’s response.

Clooney is today’s American Actor because he enacts the drama of our time. He’s the Me Generation product who thought he might get by on geniality and good looks. He’s the fellow who thought that if he just did his job well and was friendly, life would be as easy as high school and college. He’s the nice guy who honestly thought he didn’t have to care about anybody other than himself.

And then, invariably, things go wrong. People get hurt. Suddenly, there are moral dilemmas with no easy answers, along with the realization that if he really wants to maintain his self-conception as a decent man – if he wants to become that, truly – he has to re-examine his entire existence.

This is “Up in the Air.” This is “Michael Clayton.” Things were easier back in the day when all you had to do was say, “OK, now I’m going to fight the gangsters.” Or “Now I’m going to fight the Nazis.” The modern man first has to fight himself and then has to locate the bad guy, who’s usually a shifting target. He doesn’t merely have to do what’s right. He has to sift the right choice out of the murk.

Clooney’s movies show that the right choice is possible, while Clooney himself – forever taking that journey from self-satisfaction to doubt – shows you the price.

Article by: Mick LaSalle, Chronicle Movie Critic

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But some moviegoers may, once the laughter dies down, look at the choices Clooney’s been making since he found himself on the Hollywood A list, and wonder if they don’t reveal a man using the power of his celebrity to push a specific political agenda across the globe. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.)

It’s the fourth such role for Clooney, with a TV version of ‘Fail Safe,’ ‘Syriana,’ from the writer of Steven Soderbergh’s ‘Traffic,’ Soderbergh’s own ‘The Good German,’ and the upcoming ‘The American,’ in which he’ll play a Jason Bourne-like assassin on assignment in Italy. But Clooney’s hardly alone among actors with films in theaters that paint the U.S. what some would say is a negative political light.

When the next Paul Greengrass-Matt Damon collaboration, ‘Green Zone,’ hits theaters early next year, some moviegoers may wonder if the new political thriller, in which Damon plays an American soldier gone rogue in Iraq, isn’t really just the next installment of the Jason Bourne franchise, operating under an assumed identity.

It’s not. In fact, since its recent trailer premiere, several critics in the conservative blogosphere have already blasted ‘Green Zone,’ calling it Anti-American.

Meanwhile, the next ‘Bourne’ film releases next year as well, and Damon fans can hardly wait to revisit the globe-trotting, amnesiac ass-kicker. But Jason Bourne isn’t the only thing the actor is known for these days. There’s an infamous CBS interview in which he railed against Sarah Palin during the last election campaign. “I think there’s a really good chance that Sarah Palin could be President, and I think that’s a really scary thing,” the actor said. “It’s like a really bad Disney movie.’

Many of the characters Damon has played since ‘The Bourne Supremacy’ have fit a certain mold. Currently he can be seen as real-life Agribusiness whistleblower Marc Whitacre in Steven Soderbergh’s ‘The Informant!’ Before that he made a brief appearance in Soderbergh’s four-hour opus, ‘Che.’ And prior to that Damon stared in ‘The Good Shepherd’ as a fictional character based on one of the founding fathers of the CIA. Hmm … American-trained assassins, architects of the CIA., anti-corporate crusaders. Is there a pattern here?

It was, of course, the role of rogue covert ops amnesiac Jason Bourne that catapulted Damon to international stardom. He was famous before that, sure. He’s been pretty well known since winning, with pal Ben Affleck, an Academy Award for his and Affleck’s first screenplay, ‘Good Will Hunting.’ They were the Diablo Cody of their day, minus the tattoos and the lap dances (as far as we know). The film, with Gus Van Sant, onetime recipient of the ACLU’s Freedom of Expression, marked the start of Damon’s first serious creative collaboration.

But now both Damon and Clooney are super famous. And they each have several thriving collaborations. Not only have they worked together five times, they’ve both worked with Soderbergh five times (Clooney and Soderbergh liked each other so much that they formed a production company together after ‘Out of Sight’). Clooney also seems to like the Coen Brothers — he’s been in three of their films. And ‘Green Zone’ marks Damon’s fourth collaboration with British auteur Greengrass. By 2011, Damon will have worked with Clint Eastwood twice (and chances are, won, or at least been nominated for, another Oscar).

Paul Greengrass, Steven Soderbergh, Gun Van Sant — all known for liberal-leaning messages in their movies. Greengrass has made overtly political films like ‘The One That Got Away’ (about the first gulf war) and ‘Bloody Sunday,’ and the two Bourne movies considered by some to be the most critical of the reach of the U.S. government. Steven Soderbergh made a splash, and won some Oscars, for ‘Erin Brockovich,’ about a real woman who took on big corporate polluters and won; ‘Traffic,’ an indictment of the U.S. war on drugs; ‘Che,’ which criticized the CIA’s meddling in the politics of the southern hemisphere; and now ‘The Informant!,’ about America’s corrupt Argibusiness industry. And Gun Van Sant’s ‘Milk’ was seen by many as a too-late rallying cry about the passing of Prop. 8, which made gay marriage illegal again in California.

It’s no secret that much of Hollywood rubs elbows with the Democratic party. Stars and filmmakers who take a more centrist, or even Republican view of things are fewer and farther between. Since becoming Governor, or Governator, of his adopted state, Arnold Schwarzenegger is probably the most famous Republican actor to come around since Ronald Reagan. But others, like Fred Thompson, Jon Voight and Bruce Willis show up at Republican rallies, campaign for conservative candidates and, just like their lefty counterparts, sometimes reveal their political beliefs through the roles they take.

Willis in particular seems determined to create a pro-America PR blitz with his pictures. From the ‘Die Hard’ franchise to the upcoming Sylvester Stallone war comedy ‘The Expendables,’ Willis has either played a cop, a soldier or a covert agent more than a dozen times. He shows no sign of slowing down. Seven of the eight films he has in development are about cops, soldiers or assassins. If anything, Willis has kicked it into overdrive. It makes sense. With Damon, Clooney and their fellow progressives working overtime, Willis has got a lot of work to do.

Article by Mike Harvkey of Moviefone

Tags: matt damon, Misc, politics

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It’s probably a good thing for George Clooney, then, that he got his well-paying drivel out of the way early with “Batman & Robin” in 1997. Hot from his starring role on TV’s “ER,” Clooney followed Val Kilmer and Michael Keaton in the latex cape and cowl, pocketed a fat paycheck, and found himself on the receiving end of some of the most legendarily vitriolic reviews in recent history.

No wonder the experience changed his point of view. As he later told an interviewer, “There was a time, which was after ‘Batman & Robin,’ which was the right time to go, ‘OK, now if you’re going to be a film actor, do better films,’” Clooney said. “It’s mostly about working with better people, working with better scripts. That’s usually the difference, I think.”

The 12 years since that debacle has borne that out, with Clooney consistently seeking out provocative and compelling work from many of today’s most interesting filmmakers. Clooney has become the go-to guy for both Steven Soderbergh and the Coen brothers while, in the meantime, growing into a talented director himself. (Granted, last year’s “Leatherheads” didn’t really work out in his favor, but “Good Night, and Good Luck” and the underrated “Confessions of a Dangerous Mind” were exceedingly impressive efforts for his first two outings behind the camera.)

Lots of stars whose careers straddle mainstream Hollywood and the ostensibly “worthy” realm of indie cinema repeat the “one for them and one for me” mantra, where “them” is the money guys and “me” is ostensibly the bold artist; trouble is, they often start making lots more for “them” and almost nothing for “me.” Clooney, on the other hand, strikes a shrewd balance, where even his “them” pictures (the “Ocean’s” movies, for instance) are, generally speaking, more smart and stylish than most, while his “me” movies (“Burn After Reading,” “The Men Who Stare at Goats”) are indies with enough of a commercial sensibility to appeal to a mass audience. There are, of course, exceptions — Clooney and Soderbergh’s collaboration on “The Good German” and a remake of difficult Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky’s classic “Solaris” were probably never going to click with mainstream moviegoers, but you can’t blame them for trying.

His work with Soderbergh extends to their Section 8 production company, a shingle that’s made challenging and provocative fare both with Clooney (“Syriana,” “Michael Clayton”) and without (“Far From Heaven,” “A Scanner Darkly”).

Clooney’s celebrity status isn’t just interesting because of his aesthetic decisions — he’s also proven himself to be a very canny manipulator of the media. He seems to not only get the public’s love-hate relationship with good-looking famous people and the 24-hour-news-internet-tabloid-cycle, but also to subvert it with humor in a way that only a few of his peers have mastered.

Understanding that nothing makes you the butt of a joke quicker than being named People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive, Clooney beats his detractors to the punch by making the first quip himself. His consistently self-deprecating and laid-back public stance has made the idea of attacking him seem almost redundant. It’s a privilege only the most handsome get to claim, but still, he claims it, defusing even the snarkiest detractors.

Why pick on the man when he’s so willing to do it to himself? And doing so affords him the spotlight every left-leaning political Hollywood star wants to use to draw attention to causes close to their heart. Whether he’s traveling to Chad and Sudan to shed light on the plight of refugees from Darfur or criticizing lobbyist Jack Abramoff, he doesn’t hold back, knowing that thanks to his quotable nature, he’s got the media more or less eating out of his hand.

Subsequently, if there’s any area where Clooney has recently found himself under attack from certain segments of the populace, it’s for those liberal politics. If you’re a liberal yourself, of course, you were probably more inclined to like Clooney after he wound up on the receiving end of attacks by people like Bill O’Reilly over the actor’s participation in celebrity telethons that raised funds for victims of 9/11 and the 2004 tsunami. But even those who don’t necessarily agree with Clooney’s politics would at least have to acknowledge that he doesn’t hide his sympathies out of fear of losing fans.

Those fans, incidentally, may be getting younger all the time. Before the year is out, Clooney will star in Wes Anderson’s stop-motion animated adaptation of Roald Dahl’s “The Fantastic Mr. Fox” — probably the closest Clooney has gotten to a family film since his cameo appearances in the “Spy Kids” series — and he’s getting serious Oscar buzz for “Up in the Air,” the comic drama that marks writer-director Jason Reitman’s follow-up to the Oscar-nominated teen fave “Juno.”

Intentional or not, it’s a smart way for Clooney to diversify his fan base. And it can’t hurt to have admirers too young to remember “Batman & Robin.”

By Alonso Duralde
Film critic – msnbc.com contributor
updated 5:27 p.m. CT, Mon., Nov . 2, 2009

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