'We're going to have to keep coming back' - George Clooney interview

Whether it's visiting Darfur, addressing the UN in a bid to stop the genocide there or refusing to cross a picket line at the Oscars, George Clooney oozes integrity and charm at every turn – even when he makes the odd turkey

IF ROBERT Redford was once the reflex cliché for matinee idolatry, that mantle has now passed to George Clooney. Nowadays the epithet 'gorgeous' pursues him everywhere, like an especially diligent autograph-hunter. Everyone likes George Clooney or likes the idea of him, or even wants to be like him.

Even in France, a country that yawns in the face of most movie stars, there is a crowd gathered outside his six-star Deauville hotel displaying all the signs of a full-on, weapons-grade crush. That's not to mention the ladies on a Saga holiday who happen to be staying at the same hotel and can't believe their luck. When he finally appears to sign paper scraps and body parts, walking in his own bubble oblivious to the entourage of publicists, assistants and bodyguards, the fans' faces track his progress like a field of sunflowers following the light source and he instinctively gravitates towards them.

Still, he's a changed Clooney from the one looking tautly preoccupied on his Michael Clayton posters: slimmed down to the point of slightness with a stubbly salt-and-pepper beard that makes the 46-year-old look not a day under 50 and which will be gone by his Oscar-night appearance.

The weight loss, he explains , is down to his new comedy, Leatherheads, set in the world of American football – a world that expects a lot of running and tossing of pigskin, melting away two stone in the process. Clooney first saw the script almost 15 years ago when he was a more likely American football star. His role has been substantially updated, with many jokes about his status as the league's most geriatric player. "You can't try to hide your age," Clooney reasons, "and you can't try to pretend it isn't there. You have to use it as a tool."

He is jubilant about the movie and the trimmer physique, less enthusiastic about days spent getting felled on the 50-yard line by actors a generation younger than him. "I'm too old to do action films, I fall apart," he says, crinkling his eyes. "I think that they are made for actors of a certain age and I am not of that age."

He remains a heavyweight charmer with an image in Martini adverts, Ocean's Eleven and ER that has made him a happily married woman's 'just once' fantasy. Today's jovial "Where would you like to have me?" to snap-happy French female fans appears to transcend all language barriers.

The real George Clooney is safely protected behind a curtain of wisecracks and throwaway remarks – but is self-evidently a far more serious creature than the boyish character he essays. He's also more thin-skinned. When asked how he reconciles Michael Clayton's themes of social investigation with making commercials for a controversial firm like Nestlé, surprisingly, Clooney, the face of Nespresso in Europe, has struggled for a response. "I'm not going to apologise for trying to make a living every once in a while. The truth is I do an awful lot of work with people who boycott countries, you know, like the Sudan, so I'm not going to try to reconcile any of those answers…"

It would be absurd to hold an actor to statesman standards – but we've come to view Clooney as a clever man, who notes that his recent appeal for greater action in Darfur alongside conservatives like Senator Sam Brownback protected him from right-wing critics who on other issues would label him "the bad liberal freak".

Clooney has also addressed the UN about the humanitarian crisis in Sudan and visited the region twice. His first trip was in the company of his father, Nick, with whom he made a film about the country's plight. "People might say, 'What does he know on the subject?'" he says of Darfur. "Those are fair arguments. But I would suggest that over the past year or so I've made myself fairly well educated on the subject, and can speak on it. When my dad and I were there, we made a promise to those people.

"We were in a refugee camp of about 30,000 people and this little girl came over, and she was saying, 'When are you coming back?' And I said we'd be back soon. There was nothing unkind or angry or anything about this little girl, but she just giggled, and said, 'You always say that'. And I thought, 'Well, then we're going to have to – we're going to have to keep coming back."

"I'm not a politician, so the reason I go to places like Darfur is to draw attention. That's all I can do. If you put famous people in front of very ugly sites, people will watch. But you're famous and if you say something, you have to be a grown-up and take your hits – you can't sit around and say, 'Don't say bad things about me.'"

Yet he acknowledges that the celebrity spotlight has its limitations. "People can march and pat each other on the back, and concerts will happen, and the simple truth is there are still the exact same issues going on," he says.

Clooney also considered campaigning for his friend, Barack Obama, a politician he compares to President Kennedy, but calculates that the negative effect of a celebrity endorsement would outweigh the benefits. So when Obama told Clooney he was thinking about running for president, the actor was circumspect. "I told him I would do anything for him – including staying completely away from him," says Clooney, whose Democrat views are more or less mainstream in Hollywood but play less well elsewhere.

"During the lead-up to the Iraq war, I was on the front of a magazine and called a traitor. I ran into a guy not long ago who said, 'Why do you hate your country?' I said, 'Because I thought we should ask questions before we sent 150,000 people in.'"

In 2004 he helped raise funds for his father, who ran for Congress in Kentucky as a Democrat, but he did not publicly campaign on his dad's behalf. Even so, Nick Clooney got crushed.

"I saw what it did to him," says Clooney. "I watched him getting the crap beaten out of him, and I realised how incompatible my personality is with the job. There are so many concessions you have to make, and I don't like to compromise."

When Clooney talks about his dad, it's clear his father's outspokenness and activism set a standard. Cincinnati journalist Nick Clooney would tell him, 'Don't look me in the eye until you have done the right thing.'"

Growing up in Kentucky, he remembers a night out with his parents and friends which ended abruptly when someone told a racist joke. As soon as George and his older sister Ada heard the anecdote, they started cramming food into their mouths, knowing their father was about to sweep them up and storm out of the restaurant. "Now I couldn't be more proud," notes Clooney. "But I remember thinking at the time, 'Can't you just not hear it for once, Dad?'"

Even now he defers to his father. "He's the dominant one in the room. He's funny and smart. If he were here, he would be telling stories and we'd be listening."

In his 20s, he tried to follow in his father's footsteps by studying journalism but realised he lacked the ability to pose killer questions. Once they shared the same liberal views but have grown apart politically since Nick Clooney embraced his Catholic faith more closely. "It became harder for me to be completely supportive if my father would say, 'They should have a different name for it besides gay marriage'. It made it complicated for us at times, but not complicated enough to not be proud and to not campaign for him."

If Hollywood ever got its own Senate seat, Clooney could be a strong candidate to win it, although he is adamant he won't be drawn into presenting himself as a candidate. "I have no interest in being in politics," he says. "I like being on the outside. I have done too many dumb things that will come back to haunt me."

Fame came to Clooney in stages, first as a reliable stalwart of failed TV pilots, then in larger sitcom roles, until finally he landed in ER, the weekly visit to hospital which is staged like a horror movie. Clooney invested Dr Doug Ross with the weary wit of someone woken up to save the world one more time, operating on bodies as if trying to disarm a bomb. Yet while TV Guide diagnosed him as the Cary Grant of casualty, films like Batman & Robin, The Peacemaker and One Fine Day merely gave him a run of movies that only the cast of Friends could envy.

It took Out of Sight, a witty romantic chess game between a criminal Clooney and detective Jennifer Lopez, to change what he calls "luck". And it is unlikely that a man who once lived in a friend's cupboard for a year and whose CV includes cinematic landmarks such as Streethawk ("I played my evil twin") and Return of the Killer Tomatoes! will lose his perspective.

Clooney's latest chance to exhibit movie-star grace came at last weekend's Oscars ceremony, an event he had vowed not to attend if the 100-day writers' strike was not resolved, "because I don't cross picket lines". Nominated as best actor for Michael Clayton, he was bested by Daniel Day-Lewis's thunderous performance in There Will Be Blood. But as Day-Lewis made his way to the stage, he sought out Clooney to kiss, a gesture Clooney mirrored enthusiastically, having earlier predicted this outcome.

Of course, Clooney already has a supporting actor Academy award for his portrayal of a beaten-down CIA agent in Syriana. "I keep hearing, 'What did it mean to you to win the Oscar after all the years of struggling?' Well, my answer is – it didn't suck," he says. "There is an interesting thing that happens. There is this great celebration. You're really excited. You call all your friends. Your friends have called you. That part takes about a day.

"But it doesn't make any difference," he says. "I can't carry my Oscar with me into the meetings at the studio. It's still just as difficult to get a 7 million film or a 70 million film financed."

While making Syriana, he sustained injuries to his back that condemned him to two years of operations, painkillers and memory loss whilst writing, producing, starring in and directing Good Night, and Good Luck. Now fully recovered, he brushes aside sympathy. "People think you should stay in bed and get well. Had I not had work to do, I would just have sat around and felt sorry for myself."

Clooney regards celebrity as something that happened to him rather than who he is, a commodity he can trade for creative control. Shortly after teaming up on Out of Sight, Clooney and director Steven Soderbergh started Section Eight, a powerhouse designed to make the kinds of movies they felt weren't being made anymore. Occasionally that meant experimental features no one but them wanted to see (the remake of Solaris). But it also meant poppy blockbusters (Ocean's Eleven) and the kind of films that attract Oscars like a magnet attracts iron filings (Michael Clayton, Syriana and Good Night, and Good Luck).

But what Section Eight has aspired to in maverick spirit, it has lacked in popular appeal. Notwithstanding the three Ocean's films and Michael Clayton, Section Eight has not been an unqualified commercial success. Last year's The Good German was an outright failure at the box office.

"The Good German… I didn't get rich off that, or Solaris or Confessions of a Dangerous Mind or Good Night, and Good Luck. But you want to get them made so you do them for nothing. I do okay on the Ocean's films," he adds quickly. "They make a lot of money so I can pay off my house, don't worry." And if he needs quick cash, he can make a commercial or two. His Martini ad fees start at £250,000 each.

Every time I've met Clooney, he's been articulate, never in a rush to make his point but always moving towards one. Other actors may break into a rash at the prospect of meeting the press, but Clooney rarely breaks an interview date, even when in the throes of the flu. "I'm fine: I dosed up with something called Night Nurse last night in my room," he assured me on one occasion. "I slept okay but I think I may have gone to the bathroom in my wardrobe."

Like any good politician, Clooney also has an intriguingly rackety love life, which includes a three-year marriage to Talia Balsam, which ended in 1992. Since then, he's had relationships with waitress-turned-model Celine Balitran, and actresses/models Renée Zellweger, Krista Allen, Kelly Preston, Lisa Snowden and Teri Hatcher. His current girlfriend of a year is Sarah Larson but his real support system appears to be an entourage of male friends who date back to times before ER.

For all his Sexiest Man Alive awards, Clooney seems to be a guy's guy. Not only is his idol his father (his mother is a former beauty queen), but his films tend to be variations on the what-makes-a-man dilemma. Women in Clooney movies, with a few exceptions like Out of Sight, may be decorative but they are usually unreliable or downright treacherous, such as Tilda Swinton's venal lawyer in Michael Clayton.

At home in LA, Clooney holds wolf-pack gatherings around the barbecue on Sundays for his pals to grill steak and play basketball, but things rarely get rowdy unless paparazzi helicopters start circling. Once some video footage of a "hot babe seen leaving the house of George Clooney" appeared on a gossipy TV show called Hard Copy, with whom Clooney conducted a very public war over their use of the pictures. The hot babe in this case was a 44-year-old assistant director on Friends who liked to wear his hair very long. Now he wears it very short.

Clooney likes telling this story. He likes discussing his dating situation rather less. "People keep saying, 'When are you going to get married?, but I was. I've done it," he once remarked, and despite his eligibility, he hasn't found a reason to do it again.

In the past he's sounded crusty and cynical, but Clooney now admits that it's the idea of failing the tests of parenthood that terrifies him. "I don't want to be the guy who comes in and does it half-assed, the way I've done many things in my life. The minute something is tremendously difficult, I lose some sort of interest. And I don't ever want to have the responsibility of messing somebody up like that."

If there's a Clooney trademark, it is not sex or style, but self-deprecation. He always brings plenty of jokes about his perceived failures to interviews, although how sincere this deprecation really is, is a different matter. He certainly works hard at making his self-effacement appear effortless.

Clooney may not be manipulative but he is shrewd. Being the first person to mock himself means he beats us all to the punchline. "Before they could kill me on Batman & Robin, I said, 'It's a bad film, and I'm the worst thing in it,'" he admits.

"If you try to defend an indefensible position, then you will look like a schmuck. Look at Winston Churchill. He said, 'These are our shortcomings – now let's get past it.'" By crying mea culpa to a £130 million turkey, Clooney's career lived to fight another day.

"Being older helps. I didn't get famous until I was 33. Now if I was Lindsay Lohan and 19 years old, I'd have been so unprepared. But the fact is that my aunt, the singer and actress Rosemary Clooney, was famous. One year she was the hottest thing around, the next she couldn't get arrested. And it wasn't because she changed. People's tastes changed. So I know how fickle it is."

And back in the hotel at Deauville, the Saga holidaymakers would surely agree that, like fine wine, age only makes George more gorgeous. r

Leatherheads is released in the UK on April 11

Stars on their soapboxes

Bono
Cause: africa

The U2 frontman is one of the world's best-known celebrity philanthropists. He is also one of the most successful. The Nobel Peace Prize nominee played a key role in convincing leaders of the G8 to write off more than £20 billion of debt owed by 18 of the world's poorest countries. In 2002 he started DATA (Debt AIDS Trade Africa), a charity dedicated to eradicating extreme poverty and Aids in Africa, and in 2006 launched the (Product)Red campaign which got companies such as Gap, Apple and Armani involved.

Pamela Anderson
Cause: Animal rights

The Baywatch bombshell has been passionate about animal rights for more than 20 years. She has famously posed nude in the window of Stella McCartney's London shop to protest against the use of fur in fashion and teamed up with French icon Brigitte Bardot to speak out against the Canadian seal hunt.

Elton John
Cause: AIDS/HIV awareness

Following the deaths of his friends Freddie Mercury and Ryan White from Aids in the 1980s, the legendary entertainer has become one of the most vocal campaigners to raise awareness of the disease. With the help of his famous Academy Awards viewing party, benefit concerts and celebrity fundraisers, the Elton John Aids Foundation has raised more than 125 million for prevention, education and support services for people living with HIV/Aids in 55 countries.

Angelina Jolie
Cause: Refugees and human rights

Girlfriend of Brad Pitt and the world's most famous adoptive mother, blockbuster actress Jolie dedicates her time off-screen to helping refugees as a UN Goodwill Ambassador. She has visited people displaced by war and political unrest in dozens of countries and has brought their plight to the attention of her fans and world leaders. Jolie has donated millions of dollars of her own money to these causes and has also founded charitable organisations that provide free legal aid for asylum-seeking children and medical care to refugees.

Leonardo DiCaprio
Cause: Climate change and the environment

The Oscar nominee is a committed environmentalist and his work to raise awareness about climate change has landed him on the cover of Vanity Fair's Green Issue. He drives a hybrid vehicle, put solar panels on the roof of his LA home and has even bought a private island in Belize, where he plans an eco-friendly resort. Last year he brought the issue to the big screen with The 11th Hour, his documentary about global warming.

Sean Penn
Cause: Ending the Iraq war

The Mystic River actor is one of the most outspoken critics of the war in Iraq. In 2002 he spent 56,000 on a full-page advertisement in the Washington Post calling for President Bush and other leaders not to start the conflict. He has made trips to Baghdad, reported from Iran and befriended another fierce critic of the war, the controversial Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez. Many of his US critics have called him "unpatriotic". "I do feel an obligation to take responsibility with my government for actions it takes," says Penn.