Kesta Allen

After nearly ten years spent working as a minor TV actor, George Clooney finally hit the jackpot in the world famous TV series, ER as Dr. Doug Ross. With his trendy short haircut, soulful eyes, and perfect bedside manner, he is a big hit with both women and men.

Born in Lexington, Kentucky, George Clooney grew up doing commercials for his father’s TV show in Cincinatti. Almost every day Nick Clooney and his children made some sort of public appearance. Nick was a strict father to George, and had a strong sense of justice. He once told George off for remaining silent when a classmate was rude to another boy. George also remembers that every Christmas his father would take him to the house of a poor family. George says this made him respect everyone as human beings.

It was inevitable that George would make his way into showbiz. Young George had the role models of his famous uncle and aunt, Jose Ferrer and jazz singer Rosemary Clooney. However it took him a while before he got there. He may have been put off by the large number of banquets and picnics his family went to. George even developed anxieties about eating in public.

Baseball was one thing that he felt he was good at. At Northern Kentucky University he became so good that he even tried out for the Cincinatti Reds, and only just failed to be selected as a centre-fielder.

The lure of the screen proved too strong, however, and George decided to seek a career in acting. In 1982, with casual self-confidence, he dropped out of college to drive to Los Angeles – a strange choice for a man who confesses that he is terrified of earthquakes. He had 300 dollars in his pocket and was driving a car that had such an unreliable engine he dared not switch it off. ‘You’re never going to survive. You’re never going to make it,’ said his father.

His father’s words must have echoed many times in George’s ears over the next year. For twelve months he tried to get an acting role while he slept on a friend’s floor. His first professional job was in a commercial. He arrived at the audition with a six-pack of beer under his arm. ‘If you watch auditions, the best actor never gets the job,’ George said later, ‘especially in TV. You get the job when you walk in the door. Because in a strange way, we’re not selling acting. What we’re selling is confidence.’

Clooney needed all the confidence he could muster while he worked on fifteen TV shows, none of which became series. Around this time he also took a junior role in a hospital-based drama series called ER. It was never very popular, and his role was not continued. Curiously, ten years later in 1994, he won a role in another hospital drama series called ER. This time this show became hugely popular, and George’s classic good looks as Dr Doug Ross, a children’s doctor, made him the star of the series.

George’s role as Doug Ross on ER made him a sex symbol, a role he is not always comfortable with. He turned down the award of ‘Sexiest Man Alive’ from ‘People’ magazine. They put him on the front cover anyway, and his fans went wild.

George became hot property and attractive film offers rained down on him. He appeared as the handsome robber and vampire slayer, Seth Gecko, in Quentin Tarantino’s very violent 1996 film, From Dusk Till Dawn. Despite the film’s mixed reviews, it made him even more popular. In late 1996, he charmed Michelle Pfeiffer in the romantic comedy, One Fine Day. It was a role totally different from his role in From Dusk Till Dawn, and showed off his creative talent as an actor.

It wasn’t long before George was chosen to replace Val Kilmer as the caped crusader in Batman and Robin. Some say he gave the character its most sensitive representation so far. Amazingly it was only eight years since he had appeared in a co-starring role in Attack of the Killer Tomatoes!

George’s film roles and other projects began to affect his commitment to the ER series. Eventually he decided to make the break, and he was written out of the series. His character walked away from a girlfriend pregnant with twins, a plot twist that seemed sure to give him a ‘bad boy’ image. But it seems his fans are completely unfazed by this. The number of letters he received from his fans still stayed at the same level.

George’s private life has had its ups and downs. George’s marriage to Talia Balsam broke up in 1992 after just 4 years. Since then he has dated many famous women, including Dedee Pfeiffer, Michelle Pfeiffer’s sister, and Denise Crosby, Bill Crosby’s daughter. His longest relationship since his marriage was with Celine Balitran, a waitress he met in Paris. They parted after three years together, in 1999. George vows that he will never get married again, nor have any children. Michelle Pfeiffer and Nicole Kidman think differently to George. They had each bet $10,000 that he would be a father before he turned 40 in 2001.

Despite living his life in the public eye, George has very strong feelings about protecting his private life. When American TV programme Hard Copy showed a clip of him with Celine, George organised a boycott of the programme. The clip had been filmed by ‘paparazzi’ without his knowledge. The programme gave him a public apology, although they still use such clips.

George’s popularity at work is as great off screen as on, and he enjoys drinking and playing basketball with the crew at the end of a day filming.   

On the set of The Three Kings, he disliked the way the director was treating the crew, and the two men ended up in a fight. Tempers were calmed and the film finished without problems. Asked about being cast in the film, George joked, ‘Luckily, both the actors Mel Gibson and Nicholas Cage were tied and gagged in my apartment, and that was a problem for the casting department.’

George’s own production company has many projects in various stages of progress, but there is one in which he takes a special interest. It is called Kilroy, a TV series about a hopeful young actor who arrives in Hollywood to play small parts in a lot of TV series, just like George did.

And now George Clooney is the top hero of The Perfect Storm, a real story, based on the shipwreck of a group of fishermen, doing everything to get out from poverty.

No one is saying who the actor will be, but with the potential to be the next George Clooney, there has been a huge response from actors who are queuing just to get an audition!

Source: English Digest

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