George Clooney



"Clooney, you smug bastard. Why do you have to be so much better than the rest of us?"

- A forum poster.

The son of a broadcast journalist and nephew of singer Rosemary Clooney, George's acting career got off to a slow start, but he hit the bigtime when he was cast as Dr. Doug Ross on ER, which earned him Emmy nominations and propelled him to stardom. He left the show after four seasons (relatively early on in its fifteen-year run, so much so that many of Clooney's younger fans don't know he was ever on it) to pursue a film career full-time.

This had gotten off to a rather poor start with the infamously bad Batman and Robin, in which he was Batman; legend has it that Clooney will refund the ticket price of anyone who approaches him and says they saw the film. However, he quickly became a regular with the Coen Brothers, appearing in such films of theirs as O Brother, Where Art Thou? and Intolerable Cruelty; he likewise formed a partnership with Steven Soderbergh, which led to both some major blockbusters in the Ocean's Eleven series (probably the film role that best sums up Clooney's screen persona), and some smaller serious dramas, such as Solaris. As if this wasn't enough, he moved into directing, earning Oscar nominations for Good Night and Good Luck; that same year he won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role in Syriana. Three further nominations for Best Actor followed, for Michael Clayton, Up in the Air, and The Descendants. In 2011, he also earned a sceond writing nomination for The Ides of March, all the while using his spy satellites to build a case against Sudanese war criminals.

On- and off-screen, George Clooney is promoted as a major sex symbol, and one of Hollywood's most famous bachelors. He is frequently declared one of the world's sexiest men, and is compared to Cary Grant in his Old Hollywood style. Also known for his very vocal liberalism, which has turned his career into something of a zombie. While he continues to make critically acclaimed movies, they're almost all duds at the box office. (It appears even his swooning fans don't particularly care to watch two hours of him strawmanning America.)