George Clooney Movies

George Clooney, Movie Star and Philanthropist

Born in Kentucky in 1961, George Clooney should have had an easy time making it in Hollywood. His father is a well-respected TV journalist, and his father's sister, Rosemary Clooney, was a world-famous singer and actress. But George Clooney had to fight long and hard to find steady work as an actor, and he did not achieve true success until he was in his thirties, despite having worked steadily on television for a decade prior.

Before finding success on "ER", George Clooney had recurring roles on popular television shows like "The Facts of Life" and "Roseanne".

Fun George Clooney Facts:

• People magazine's Sexiest Man Alive twice, in 1997 and 2006
• Related to Rosemary Clooney, Jose and Miguel Ferrer and Debby Boone
• He almost landed the role in "Thelma & Louise" that eventually went to Brad Pitt and made him a star
• Former co-stars Michelle Pfieffer and Nicole Kidman each bet him $10,000 that he would be a father by the age of 40. The actresses lost, and each sent him a check, which he returned. The confirmed bachelor then bet them double-or-nothing that he still would not have any children by age 50!
  

George Clooney made a few terrible movies in his early career (like "Return of the Killer Tomatoes!" and "Return to Horror High") before "ER" made him a household name. His role on that successful TV show eventually led to roles in the movies, including a turn as Batman in the film that killed that franchise, "Batman & Robin".

By the end of the 1990s, George Clooney had established himself as a bona-fide movie star with movies like "Out of Sight", "The Thin Red Line" and "Three Kings". Over the following years, George Clooney movies became more and more successful at the box office, and the actor branched out, accepting smaller character roles in films that he cared about, and also became a director.

In 2005, he was nominated for Academy Awards for acting, directing and writing in two different films - "Good Night. and Good Luck", which he co-wrote and directed, and "Syriana", for which he won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar. Over the past few years, he has been nominated for nine Golden Globe Awards and four Oscars.

George Clooney's Philanthropy

In recent years, George Clooney has tried to use his fame and fortune to help draw attention to tragedies - both natural and man-made - around the world, and he was given the Bob Hope Humanitarian Emmy Award in 2010 for his efforts in places including Darfur, Haiti and post-Katrina New Orleans. The "Hope for Haiti Now" fund-raiser that he helped to organized in support of the survivors of the Haitian earthquake in 2010 raised over $60 million.

George Clooney Movies List

Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009)

• Based on the children's book by Roald Dahl, "Fantastic Mr. Fox" features an impressive cast of actors, including George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Bill Murray, Willem Dafoe and Jason Schwartzman. Director Wes Anderson used stop-motion animation to tell the story of Mr. Fox, a reformed bird-thief who returns to his criminal ways and experiences the wrath of three local farmers.

• Unlike most animated films, the actors' dialogue was not recorded individually and then later combined; instead, Anderson gathered the cast at a farmhouse in Connecticut and had them act out their scenes together to give the film's soundtrack a more realistic tone.
  

Up in the Air (2009)

• In director Jason Reitman's follow-up to "Juno", George Clooney plays a professional corporate downsizing expert whose constant travel keeps him at arms length from other people. He likes his life just the way it is, but when he falls for a beautiful fellow traveler he starts to question whether living out of a suitcase is really as fulfilling as he thinks it is.
  

O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)

• In his first film with the Coen brothers. George Clooney plays one of three escaped convicts on the run in the American south in this story based loosely on Homer's "Odyssey". The men are racing to retrieve the hidden loot from a bank robbery, but meet a string of strange characters along the way, including a trio of sirens, a cyclops and a KKK lynch mob!
• The bluegrass soundtrack for this movie became a surprise best-seller, making more money than the film and even winning two Country Music Awards and the Grammy for Album of the Year.

The Thin Red Line (1998)

• George Clooney is part of an impressive ensemble cast in Terrence Malick's World War II film, "The Thin Red Line". The movie follows a group of young soldiers during the Battle of Guadacanal as they develop strong bonds during the horrors of battle.
• The film was not a financial success, but it was highly regarded by critics and earned 7 Academy Award nominations.

Ocean's Trilogy (Ocean's Eleven/ Ocean's Twelve/ Ocean's Thirteen)

• Teaming up with director Steven Soderbergh and an all-star cast, the "Ocean's" movies are a return to the classic heist genre of cinema. Clooney plays Danny Ocean, the leader of a group of master thieves who plot to rob three casinos in one night.
• Director Soderbergh conceived of the "Ocean's" movies as a means of both working with his friends and generating the financing for his more personal projects - the income he brings in with each film allow him to finance the much smaller independent films that he is best known for.

Batman & Robin (1997)

• In the last installment of the highly successful Batman movie series of the 1990s, George Clooney dons the cowl as the Caped Crusader in the overly-campy "Batman & Robin". In a Bat-suit complete with sculpted nipples, Clooney's Batman fights alongside Robin (Chris O'Donnell) and Batgirl(Alicia Silverstone) to defeat Mr Freeze (Arnold Schwarzenegger) and Poison Ivy (Uma Thurman).
• George Clooney has often said that this film was so bad that it managed to kill the Batman franchise for Warner Brothers!

The Men Who Stare At Goats (2009)

• George Clooney co-stars with Ewan McGregor and Jeff Bridges in this based-on-real-events story about an elite corps of psychic soldiers in the U.S. Army! Clooney plays a possibly insane members of this secret program who takes McGregor's journalist character on a wild ride through the Mid-East.
• The members of the secret corps call themselves "Jedis" - Ewan McGregor played Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi in the Star Wars prequels, and hearing him and the other characters refer to Jedis is pretty surreal!

The Perfect Storm (2000)

• The George Clooney movie "A Perfect Storm" is based on the best-selling book of the same name. It tells the true-life story of a group of swordfish fisherman in the North Atlantic who lost their lives in a freak storm.
• Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio plays real-life female ship captain Linda Greenlaw, who is featured in Discovery Channel's "Swords: Life on the Line", a reality show that follows several boats fishing the same waters profiled in the movie.

Michael Clayton (2007)

• In an Academy Award nominated performance, George Clooney stars as a "fixer" for a large law firm. His personal life crosses paths with his professional one in this brilliant time-shifting story.
• The movie was written and directed by Tony Gilroy, who had previously written the "Bourne" movies featuring Matt Damon, a friend and frequent co-star of George Clooney.

From Dusk Till Dawn (1998)

• "From Dusk Till Dawn" is the first teaming of master indie filmmakers Quentin Tarantino (who wrote the screenplay and co-stars) and Robert Rodriguez (who directs). The movie starts out as a very Tarantino-esque crime thriller, but takes a sharp left turn halfway through and turns into a kick-ass vampire movie!
• The Collector's Edition DVD of "From Dusk Till Dawn" includes a fantastic bonus disc, featuring a documentary detailing director Rodriquez's hardships as he attempts to film the movie outside of the rigid Hollywood union system. There's also an extremely rare on-camera interview with Harvey Keitel. The bonus documentary alone is worth the price of the DVD!

Out of Sight (1998)

• In his first collaboration with director Steven Soderbergh, George Clooney co-stars with Jennifer Lopez as a bank robber who escapes from prison and falls for Lopez's U.S. Marshall. As Clooney and his partner (played by Ving Rhames) head for Detroit to make one last score, they cross paths with a nasty ex-con (played by the great Don Cheadle) and his dim-witted cohort (Steve Zahn), with Lopez's Marshall hot on their trail.
• The movie is based on an Elmore Leonard novel, and one of the characters is Ray Nicolette, an FBI agent played by Michael Keaton. Keaton plays the same character in Quentin Tarantino's "Jackie Brown", also based on an Elmore Leonard novel!
• The first major Hollywood movie to feature two actors who had played Batman - George Clooney and Michael Keaton.

Three Kings (1999)

• George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg, Ice Cude and Spike Jonze star in "Three Kings", a different kind of war movie. One of the first films to use the first Gulf War as its backdrop, "Three Kings" tells the tale of a group of soldiers who plot to steal Saddam's gold, but end up being the last ray of hope for a group of Iraqi civilians desperate to escape the horrors of war.
• Reportedly, director David O. Russell wanted Nicolas Cage to play the lead. When Cage turned out to be unavailable, George Clooney was cast, instead. Clooney and Russell did not get along during the shoot, and the director once said that he wouldn't make another film with the actor even if "they paid me $20 million".

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