When asked what it means to have reached this point, Clooney starts with a joke about his age: “You know, I’m 65 years old; everything is melancholy.
When asked what it means to have reached this point, Clooney starts with a joke about his age: “You know, I’m 65 years old; everything is melancholy. Literally, you brush your teeth, and you’re like, Oh, my teeth used to be so much nicer.” But the melancholy doesn’t last long. “I’m always very optimistic about things.”
Venice, Amal, and the “greatest moment”
When asked to choose a memory from his many visits to the film festival, Clooney has a quick and personal answer: “I have had a love story with Venice for about 30 years, and in fact was married here.” He also says that a festival’s ability to bring to lithe stories that would otherwise remain unseen continues to fascinate him. “Storytelling, in general, is something we can’t live without it. We, as a society, need to see the world through other people’s eyes; otherwise, we don’t learn anything about one another, and then suddenly we find ourselves in cocoons and we start to demonize one another.”
Clooney, who owns a villa on Lake Como, also comments on his love for the Italian festival. “I have a great affection for this festival, in a very deep way…. Receiving this is really nice.”
He then looks back on his life’s work: “Careers are really funny. It’s so many different accidents that get you here, so many different lefts and rights and things that could have gone wrong or right. It’s hard to sustain all of that, and you rely on kindness of friends and kindness of people you work with.”
“The only reason I’m not directing, which I love doing, is because I have two nine-year-old kids”
Becoming a father to Alexander and Ella, his twins with Amal, changed the actor’s life and work. The children, now nine years senior, play a direct role in his professional decisions.
“The only reason I’m not directing, which I love doing, is because I have two nine-year-old kids, and in order for me to spend time with them, I can’t,” he says. The reason is very straightforward: “You know, if I act in a movie, it’s three months, and I can go and come and go and come back. When you direct a movie, it’s a year, wherever you are, and there’s no traveling back and forth, so I can’t do that anymore.” He doesn’t seem to view this as a sacrifice, but rather as one of those things that happens when the priorities in one’s life shift: “You have to make peace with change. You know, you get older and you go, Wow, I’m not gonna play that part anymore.”
The United States: “We’re gonna get through all of this”
Then, inevitably, the conversation turns to America. Clooney has never made a secret of his political views, and once again he’s asked what he thinks of the United States today. “Look, I’m always very optimistic about things, and we’re at a moment in time that’s unfortunate—I think that’s an understatement. I do believe that we’re gonna get through all of this,” he replies, omitting mention of Donald Trump but making the reference quite clear.
To explain his optimism, he looks back to another moment in American history that seemed hopeless: “ I’m old enough to have been through 1968 in the States, when every city in the United States was set on fire, and we lost Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy in the same year. There was tons of violence. The capital was surrounded with tanks. We’ve had some other difficult times, but this is one of them.” For Clooney, the answer lies in institutions, civic participation, and elections. “There’s a great word, kakistocracy, which is a country run by the least qualified people. I think maybe we have a kakistocracy right now, but we’ll get through it, and we will have an election in November that should be a check and balance, and then in 2028, with any luck, we’ll have some restoration into some normalcy.”
