As his new Disney film, Tomorrowland A World Beyond, hits cinemas, the Hollywood star discusses his past, present and future.
George Clooney gives other men a bad name.
Suave, intelligent, decent, polite and women tell me he’s handsome it’s impossible for ordinary members of the male species to keep up.
Condemning myself to another humbling by comparison, I met up with George at Claridge’s Hotel in London this week to talk about his new movie, Tomorrowland A World Beyond.
It’s an unusual film and role to see George in, a Disney movie aimed at families in which he plays the steadying, older hand to two young and enthusiastic co-stars.
“I’ve gotten to that point in my career,” he smiles in a typical moment of self-mockery. “It is funny, because when I was in my mid-thirties I was the guy who’d punch somebody, and then walk away with the explosions going off behind me.
“Now I just get the hell beaten out of me! They smash me in the face and I fall down and cry.
“But I thought it was an important film to make, I liked the message. I grew up in a period of time where the idea was that your voice could change the world. And we saw it happen. We saw Rosa Parks on a bus, we saw things change, and we believed when I was growing up that we had the ability to do that.
“I think, over time, we’ve lost sight of that a little bit and I think it’s really important to make a film like this to say: `The future is not inevitable, and what seems very dark and gloomy doesn’t necessarily have to be recreated we can change it it doesn’t have to just be the people with the greatest amount of power. It can be a teenager.’
In the sci-fi adventure George plays a former child genius who now lives a solitary existence on a farm. He’s coaxed out of his hideaway by Casey Newton (Britt Robertson), a young woman displaying his former enthusiasm for science.
Together they go in search of Tomorrowland, a futuristic world built by scientists that may be Earth’s only hope of survival.
The origin of the ambitious movie stems from Walt Disney himself, an optimist and innovator who believed that technology held the key to building a better world.
In 1955, he created Tomorrowland as a section of Disneyland, and later introduced three rides for the 1964 World’s Fair including It’s A Small World, in reference to the world finding itself on the brink of nuclear war as a result of the Cuban Missile Crisis.
George, who serves as one of the United Nations’ messengers of peace, believes now is a good time for such a movie as there are many similarities between our fears for the future in the 1960s and our worries about IS and renewed tensions with Russia today.
“I’ll be long dead before [the world’s problems] are solved but participating is part of the game, I’ve always believed in that, and that was part of what attracted me to the film.
“I go to Sudan and Darfur and it’s a very difficult time in a lot of these places, certainly in sub-Saharan Africa and all over the Middle East.
“You’ll see these things and feel completely inundated if you watch the news and you should watch the news but it can’t just be that. There has to be some positive in it.
“It wasn’t particularly great in 1968 either. There were assassinations and wars and there was civil unrest and riots, everything felt like the world was going to fall apart, but there was also the Apollo mission and man walked on the moon. So there was always something that made us believe that things would somehow work out.
“So I’m optimistic, I’m an optimistic person, always have been.”
The 54-year-old has had plenty to feel good about in recent times having tied the knot with human rights lawyer Amal Alamuddin, 37, in Venice last September.
The pair have bought a house together in Berkshire a move to Britain which George jokes was “incredibly optimistic” and, despite both having their professions, they work to an agreement that they can never spend more than a week apart.
“I’m a very lucky man to have met someone as special as her so I’m very happy right now.
“I’ve had a very lucky life – I’ve been able to do a lot of things that I never would have imagined I’d be able to. It’s a very good time of my life right now, I am having a wonderful time.”
Suave, intelligent, handsome, polite and lucky too. Some men make the rest of us sick.
Tomorrowland A World Beyond is at cinemas now.
Enjoy the convenience of having The Sunday Post delivered as a digital ePaper straight to your smartphone, tablet or computer.
Subscribe for only £5.49 a month and enjoy all the benefits of the printed paper as a digital replica.
Subscribe