GORGEOUS GEORGE AT 60

George Clooney is the kind of film star that only comes around once in a generation – so much so that he almost seems to belong to another era. As he turns 60, Silver Digest ponders his life and career.

The standard line on George Clooney is that he has always looked older than he is. He’s seldom had difficulty being in the roles of a character a decade older than he is. But now, George Clooney is 60 – his birthday was in May – and there seems to be something of a reversal taking place. It’s not quite that he’s finally catching up with his appearance, or that he now seems younger than he is. Rather, it’s that the ageless quality he’s had for many years makes his age hard to pin down, in a different way from before.

Even if he was starting to look his age, however, the circumstances of his life seem to have taken on a reversal. After an extended period of happy-golucky bachelorhood, Clooney finally got married and settled down in 2014. His wife, British-Lebanese human rights lawyer Amal (née Alamuddin) is 17 years his junior. They had twins, Alexander and Ella, in 2017. They have just turned four. In interviews, he’s joked that his friends his own age all have kids who have grown up and flown the coop.

George and Amal Clooney at the Cannes Film Festival in 2016.

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Perhaps it’s the contradictions about his life that make him hard to pin down. In some ways he looks like he’s starting out in life. In others, he’s a Hollywood elder statesman. In fact, if you look at his career since marriage and kids, there have been fewer and fewer film appearances.

He’s becomes more interested in taking on directorial roles, and has also becomes immersed in various charitable foundations and other causes. He was most recently in the news for starting up a school in Los Angeles to train teenagers for filmindustry-related jobs, along with the likes of Don Cheadle and Eva Longoria. He also set up the Clooney Foundation for Justice (CFJ), which advocates for “justice through accountability for human rights abuses around the world”. He has, for many years, been fairly outspoken on a range of issues, from the Trump presidency to the Elgin Marbles.

Nevertheless, he has spent the past year under lockdown hard at work editing and, more recently, promoting his new film for Netflix, The Midnight Sky, which he stars in and directs. It’s sort of a post-apocalyptic sci-fi story set in the future, in which he plays an astronomer stranded on the North Pole, trying to warn a spaceship full of astronauts not to return to earth, which has become toxic and uninhabitable. Like a lot of what he does, it combines entertainment and seriousness, reflecting on some of what the pandemic has taught us without being too explicit.

Ethan Peck, grandson of legendary actor Gregory Peck, plays plays a young Clooney in Midnight Sky.

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It received mixed critical reviews, but still spawned a plethora of interviews and features, and catapulted Clooney onto the cover of GQ magazine with an Icon of the Year award. It seems he can do no wrong. One interviewer commented, in a profile years ago in the New Yorker, that Clooney seemed like an advocate for fame itself.

For a long time, Clooney looked like the last of a certain breed of big-screen stars. Part of his appeal lay in the slightly oldfashioned aspect of his particular brand of glamour and charm. He seemed like a Hollywood leading man in the mould of Cary Grant or Gregory Peck, but somehow transported to the modern era, rather than a modern media creation. (In fact, in The Midnight Sky, Clooney’s younger self is played by Peck’s grandson, Ethan!) And he is known for eschewing the temptations of social media.

After a year of lockdown, and the crushing effect it has had on cinema, not to mention the rise and rise of streaming services, maybe he is the last iconic film star. The opportunity to have a career like his might never exist in the same way again. He shot to fame playing a doctor on the hit medical drama TV series ER, and graduated to the big screen fairly effortlessly – although his films include an odd mixture of roles, from quirky Coen brothers films to the Ocean’s 11 franchise, a dud turn as Batman, and a star turn as the voice of Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr Fox, based on the Roald Dahl book.

George Clooney (left) with his ER co-stars with their Screen Actors Guild Awards in 1997.

He’s also not been averse to taking on adverts – he’s long been associated with the coffee brand Nespresso, for example – which has helped fund some of his other projects, including more serious (read: less profitable) films.

He has proven his acting chops, winning an Oscar for his supporting role in 2005’s Syriana, and narrowly missing out on another to Daniel Day-Lewis for his role in Michael Clayton. But, for the most part, his success seems to lie in a reversal of his Hollywood persona, which might be characterised as hugely charming but always hinting at some sort of roguishness or mischief. His taste for pranks and practical jokes is legendary. From Danny Ocean to the Fantastic Mr Fox, he’s been most adept at playing charming villains!

Clooney’s legendary charm and effortless skill as an interviewee, appearing candid while giving very little away, sometimes make him seem like ‘George Clooney’ is the character he plays best of all.

And indeed, despite the years of slog before his breakthrough in medical drama series ER, which only came when he was well into his 30s, there is something charmed and cinematographic about his life. At times, another interviewer once suggested, he has seemed to live his life for the stories and anecdotes.

For example, one legendary tale saw him giving 14 friends each a million dollars. After the space film Gravity brought a surprising windfall, he invited his oldest and dearest friends over to dinner, and afterwards gave them each a suitcase with a million dollars of cash inside. (Rather than a fee for his role in Gravity, Clooney agreed to take a share of the profits. He said in an interview that its makers thought it would be a flop, but it turned out to be a surprising success. At the time, with no wife and no kids, he decided he would rather thank everyone whose sofas he slept on and who had helped him out and lent him money when he was broke while he was still alive.)

George Clooney and Sandra Bullock at the premier of Gravity in New York in 2013.

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In another strange turn, it turns out that the largest part of George Clooney’s fortune has nothing to do with his career as an actor or director. His greatest financial windfall came when he sold a tequila brand he started with two friends (one of whom is the husband of Cindy Crawford, Rande Gerber) for a billion dollars. The brand, Casamigos, was named after the houses he and Gerber built next to each other in Mexico. They originally formalised the brand so that they could bring their homemade tequila to the US without breaking the law!

George Clooney won the award for Best Actor - Motion Picture Drama at the 2012 Golden Globe Awards for his role in The Descendants.

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So now, George Clooney finds himself rich and famous, both charmed and charming, on the eve of a new chapter, not only of his life, but you could even say a new era of human existence. That legendary persona, the extravagant gestures, the dedication to his craft and the seemingly effortless success, has made him into ‘the George Clooney’ and earned him his giant status in the pantheon of Hollywood Icons. But it seems he will be living his life, at an age when many are preparing to retire, doing the one thing he hasn’t done yet – having an ordinary family. Whatever that might mean for George Clooney.