To many the idea is preposterous, but George Clooney insists that audiences will eventually tire of his face. Hence his desire to move his career behind the camera, he tells Bob Tourtellotte
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Ten years from now, George Clooney reckons people are going to be so sick of seeing him on movie screens that he may give up much of his acting career.
But don't think Clooney, 46, the suave leading man in many blockbusters in a career spanning more than
20 years, is leaving Hollywood anytime soon. He is turning increasingly to directing.
Clooney says he is more successful than he ever dreamed he would be, most recently starring in last year's Oscar-nominated drama Michael Clayton and the football comedy Leatherheads, which he also directed, and which opens in New Zealand next week. "Ten years from now, I imagine people will be fairly sick of seeing a lot of us who are on camera now," Clooney says, "My hope is I'll be directing more. That is my goal."
Leatherheads, co-starring Renee Zellweger, marks his third film as a director after Confessions of a Dangerous Mind and Good Night, and Good Luck.
Clooney said he may begin work on a fourth directing job, tentatively titled Suburbicon written by No Country for Old Men brothers Joel and Ethan Coen, at the end of this year.
"I like doing it. It's really creative and fun and a place where I want to put most of my focus."
It was roughly 10 years ago when Clooney first read a screenplay for Leatherheads. He was a popular television actor on hospital drama ER, but he had suffered through two poorly received movies in Batman and Robin and The Peacemaker. The turning point came in 1998 with a starring role in drama Out of Sight, directed by Steven Soderbergh, that won over film critics and moviegoers.
It was Soderbergh who imagined Clooney in the lead role of Leatherheads. He plays Dodge Connelly, an aging star of professional football, circa 1925, whose looks and charm help him woo women but do little to keep his team on firm financial footing.
Just after Dodge calls it quits for lack of money, along comes college star and war hero Carter "The Bullet" Rutherford (John Krasinski) to lure fans and put Dodge back in business.
They both fall for a woman reporter (Zellweger), but true to movie-style romance, only one can win in the game of love.
Unlike the political drama Good Night, and Good Luck and the legal thriller Michael Clayton - both nominated for the best film Oscar - Leatherheads is not going to win any awards.
But after acting in the oil and politics drama Syriana and last year's serious-minded Clayton, Clooney (the actor) figured it was time to perform in a film that was fun. Clooney (the director) wanted to show he could make a comedy after proving his deft hand at drama.
"I needed to do something completely different or I was going to become the `issues director'," Clooney said. "That sort of ends your career really quickly when the issues change."
So, he "dusted off" the script he had read 10 years earlier and shaped Leatherheads into the type of comedy he wanted to make - light-hearted and certainly not issue-oriented.
Clooney says the toughest part of making the movie was acting and directing himself in the football scenes, because often the actor in him would be too bruised to go on, but the director in him knew he needed another take.
With his character required to feature in a number of physically demanding sequences, the was also keenly aware of the march of time.
"I'm 46. I realised if I don't make this film now, I'm never going to do it," Clooney said.
"I was also going to play football. And it hurt. The first day I got hit by a 21-year-old and it hurt."
Clooney said the experience of directing a film and starring in the lead role had been an eye-opener that he was unlikely to repeat.
"I wouldn't by design direct a film where I would play the lead ever again. It was a dumb move in some ways," he said, citing the awkwardness of having to direct co-stars while starring in the same scene as them.
"It's tricky because there's an enormous amount of narcissism that comes into play," Clooney said. "You're breaking the trust between two actors particularly when you're doing the lead and directing.
"If you and I are doing a scene together I'm not supposed to be judging you as an actor. While a lot of actors will suggest how to do something, in general it is the director who performs that role. So you're breaking that trust.
"As an actor it's easy because I know exactly what I need from a scene. But it's embarrassing when you're sitting across from Renee and she's doing a fantastic job, but you know that the camera has come in too close, too soon and you have to say 'Cut!'."
But after a long career of mostly acting, he was doing what he wanted - directing.
"The truth is I'm infinitely more successful than I ever thought I would be," he said. "I really didn't think I was going to be in this position, so I get to push the envelope and do the things I want to do - for as long as they let me do it."
LOWDOWN
Who: George Clooney, actor-director
Born: May 6, 1961, Lexington, Kentucky
Key roles: ER (1994); From Dusk Til Dawn (1996), Three Kings (1999), O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), The Perfect Storm (2000), Oceans Eleven (2001), Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002), Oceans 12 (2004), Syriana (2005), Good Night, And Good Luck (2006), The Good German (2006), Oceans 13 (2007), Michael Clayton (2007)
Latest: Leatherheads opens May 29.TEN years from now, George Clooney reckons people are going to be so sick of seeing him on movie screens that he may give up much of his acting career.
