George Clooney Biography

NAME: George Clooney

OCCUPATION: Activist, Film Actor, Television Actor

BIRTH DATE: May 06, 1961 (Age: 50)

EDUCATION: Northern Kentucky University

PLACE OF BIRTH: Lexington, Kentucky

Actor, director, producer, writer. Born George Timothy Clooney on May 6, 1961, in Lexington, Kentucky. Clooney comes from a well-known family of media and entertainment personalities. His father, Nick, spent many years as a television personality and news anchor. His aunt, Rosemary Clooney, had a long career as a singer and actress.

Due to the nature of his father's work, George Clooney and his older sister Ada moved several times to various locations throughout Kentucky and Ohio with their parents. In 1974, they settled down for good in a rambling, old Victorian home in downtown Augusta, Kentucky, a small town on the Ohio River about an hour south of Cincinnati.

Slowly parts came, even if they weren't the kind of roles he dreamed about. He landed a recurring role on the popular teen comedy The Facts of Life, from 1985 to 1987. From 1988 to 1991, Clooney also made guest appearances on the dysfunctional family sitcom Roseanne. In 1992, he starred in the short-lived series Bodies of Evidence, playing a detective. On the drama Sisters, he played another detective and the love interest for Sela Ward's character. There were small movie roles, too, including the part of a lip-synching transvestite in a 1993 thriller called The Harvest.

In 2002, Clooney had small but memorable role as a crippled crook in "Welcome to Collinwood." Following up, he made his directorial debut with "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind," based on the book by Chuck Barris, the former host of "The Gong Show," who claimed he was a CIA hit man. Clooney aped Soderbergh's off-kilter visual style, while at the same time, infusing his own breezy sense of humor, creating a daring first film that garnered many admirers. Clooney then co-starred with Natascha McElhorne in the thriller feature, "Solaris," a sci-fi remake of a 1972 Russian film which reunited the actor again with pal Steven Soderbergh. A metaphorical meditation on life and death co-produced by James Cameron, "Solaris" failed to attract much attention at the box office. Meanwhile, a spotty track record was being formed for Section Eight, a production company formed by Clooney and Soderbergh. Though developing an interesting array of film and television projects - including the surprisingly subdued Washington insider docudrama "K Street" (HBO, 2003-04) - Section Eight failed to generate much profit outside "Ocean's 11." The team rebounded creatively with "Unscripted" (2005), a chronicle of the ups and downs of a trio of actors making their way in Hollywood.

All of his hard work on Syriana did not go unnoticed. In 2005, Clooney won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in the film. He was also nominated for another important project, Good Night, and Good Luck, that same year. The film examines the clash between distinguished news anchor Edward R. Murrow and Senator Joseph McCarthy. Clooney directed the film and co-wrote the screenplay, which served partly as a tribute to his newsman father. Widely praised, the black-and-white drama helped Clooney earn his first nominations for Best Director and Writing

A turn as a slippery federal agent in The Coen Brothers' dark farce "Burn After Reading" (2008) marked one of the filmmakers' bigger commercial successes, and was well-suited to Clooney's penchant for both political-leaning material and social satire, though the film's dips into slapstick territory were a curious choice for an A-list cast. The prolific actor returned to theaters the following year alongside Jeff Bridges, Ewan McGregor, and Kevin Spacey in "The Men Who Stare At Goats" (2009), a comedy based on a little-known U.S. military program that once trained personnel to develop psychic abilities to be used during combat. In theaters almost simultaneously was Jason Reitman's adaptation of the novel "Up in the Air" (2009), starring Clooney as a traveling executive addicted to his peripatetic lifestyle but faced with the possibility of having to set down both figurative and literal roots. Clooney also voiced the title character of Roald Dahl's "The Fantastic Mr. Fox" (2009) in a stop-motion animated adaptation of the classic tale helmed by Wes Anderson and also starring the voice-over talent of Meryl Streep, Bill Murray and Jason Schwartzman. Clooney closed out the year with a beautiful new girlfriend, Italian TV presenter, Elisabetta Canalis, on his arm, as well as nominations from the Screen Actors Guild, the Golden Globes, and the Academy for Best Actor for "Up in the Air."