George Clooney

Clooney pulled double duty on Michael Clayton as both star and executive producer. His commitment to the project has paid off: The film has picked up seven Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director and a Best Actor nod for Clooney.

In Michael Clayton, George Clooney plays the title character, a slick attorney working for a prestigious New York law firm. Dubbed the ‘fixer’, his job is to clean up legal crises and protect the company’s well-heeled clients from bad press or litigation. When one of the firm’s senior partners suffers a breakdown and threatens to expose the illegal activities of an important corporate client, Clayton is brought in to take care of the lawyer and nurse him back to shape. Over four eventful days, Clayton is presented with moral dilemmas and is forced to confront his own weaknesses and question his own ethics.

In this interview, the 46-year-old star talks about everything but marriage and kids!

How good a ‘fixer’ are you in your own life?

The initial part of your career, when you do bad sitcoms, is all about fixing scenes! But in real life I’m pretty good at fixing things. I am usually the guy in those situations that you want to have come in. I’m good at coming in and saying, ‘What’s the problem? Why don’t we sit everybody down and solve this?’

What about relationships?

My own relationships aside, I’m pretty good at fixing other ones! But we’ll have to ask all my friends if I’ve helped them in that area!

What appealed to you about Michael Clayton?

He is a character who has travelled along a line because it was the way things go and the way you’re supposed to do it. Somewhere in there you catch up and go, ‘Wait a minute, that’s not how it should be, let’s fix it’. It’s not just redemption for yourself but redemption for us as a country if you consider America has made mistakes also, from Japanese internment camps to the Geneva Convention but now we’re at that moment in our history where we start to adjust and fix our mistakes.

Your character questions the way his life has gone. Have you ever had doubts about the choices you’ve made?

I think you’d quit if you thought you’d done everything you wanted to do in your life; there is a lot more for me to do next. I’m interested in a lot of other things and I feel as though I’m in the beginning, not the middle or the end.

What else are you interested in accomplishing?

I really enjoy directing and writing and [the projects I’ve been involved in] have been fairly well received so that’s a good place to land. But there are things you want to get involved in as you get older, that move more and more towards figuring out how you can look out for people who can’t look out for themselves, like the situation in Darfur. [Clooney was appointed UN Messenger of Peace for focusing world attention on the war-torn region of Sudan.] If I’m going to go somewhere that cameras are going to follow me, they might as well follow me to places people should be looking at.

Are you still living in your house on Lake Como in Italy?

I go there whenever I can and stay as long as I can. My parents love it and I got my grandma from Kentucky a passport and took her there. She thought it was the most beautiful place she’d ever seen! The mayor of this little town came up with a plan recently to fill in the old boat dock port next to my house and make it into a park for the viewing of George Clooney’s house! I signed the petition with all the townspeople saying not to do this because I don’t want the town to be changed because I live there. Fortunately we overturned it!

You’ve always been known for having great manners. Why is that so important to you?

I think you just have to live by the golden rule of treat them like you want to be treated. I don’t like this coarsening of America, like in American Idol where the judges make fun of people and everyone has to voice their opinion, even if it’s mean or hurtful. The other day this woman came up to me and said, ‘I hated your last movie’ and went on and on and said, ‘You’re much older in person.’ So I said, ‘Well, I think those extra 35 pounds look great on you!’ She thought I was so rude, but I reminded her that I was just standing there and she came up to insult me! I don’t get along with everybody and I have to spend time with people working on the Darfur issue where I disagree on almost every issue with them, but you have to be polite and find a way to find the good.

Do you think marriage and children are in your future?

Are you really asking me this again and expecting a serious answer? (Laughs.) I’m happy in my life and I have great friends, but I don’t have any set plans because any plan always ends up backfiring. All I can say is that I have an interest in doing what I’m doing and not even my mum is giving me a hard time about it because she thinks she’s too young to be a grandparent anyway!