George Clooney Quotes

There's a certain cruelty to being on a big screen as your eyelids start to sag and your hair falls out and turns gray that you either have to be able to handle or not. What you can't do is try to force yourself into roles that you could have played or would have played ten years earlier.

I didn't have time. I was too busy breaking up Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman's marriage. (on rumours he was responsible for Julia Roberts and Benjamin Bratt's break-up)

My biggest fear is doing the same things 10 years from now. That would be a failure. It's something you have to constantly reassess, and asking yourself what you are going to do next makes it a good, long full journey.

If you try desperately to hang on to something that used to be a success for you, it's going to go away. You have to change.

I have a real interest in pushing some of the limits of things that studios don't want to make.

You get better as an actor over time if you're growing. Like singers.

What you learn after you are 40 is that it is just about plugging up holes in the boat. You just hope you have enough corks to plug enough of the holes.

Failures are infinitely more instructive than successes.

Do you want the truth or the politically correct version? The truth is that I go plastic, it's so much easier. And I like to put the bags over my head at night when I sleep, which I think all the kids at home should try. Kidding!!

I'm the least metrosexual cat you've ever met. I've never had my fingernails or toenails done, and I've cut my own hair longer than other people have cut my hair.

I've been left for someone ... all those things ... It was sometimes a surprise, and sometimes you saw t coming. The most painful was when I kept trying to get someone back. But we all make dumb mistakes.

I don't believe in heaven and hell. I don't know if I believe in God. All I know is that as an individual, I won't allow this life - the only thing I know to exist - to be wasted.

'Ides of March' I did for scale - scale as a director, scale as an actor, scale as a writer.

I'm interested in making films that ask questions and don't particularly provide answers.

In the '60s, when I was growing up, one of the great elements of American culture was the protest song. There were songs about the civil rights movement, the women's rights movement, the antiwar movement. It wasn't just Bob Dylan, it was everybody at the time.

My father ran for Congress in 2004, and I got a sense that there is no way to achieve much success without a certain amount of compromise.

I think people in Italy live their lives better than we do. It's an older country, and they've learned to celebrate dinner and lunch, whereas we sort of eat as quickly as we can to get through it.

There's a coffin in the back of the church as the wedding is going on ... Look, I'm a romantic. I like marriage ... In the movies.

We try to make films for people [that are] the films that we'd like to see. They're not easy to get made. They're hard to get made. You have to keep the budget low to get them made. But at the end of the day, I don't really worry about competition, because I don't really think of it that way. I don't feel like I'm in a race with anybody.

America can't beat anyone anymore.

The idea that every time you do a film you're supposed to be tortured confuses me. I mean, guys who say, 'Oh, it's really tough, my character is really suffering' -come on. For us, even in the rotten ones we've had a good time. I don't think you have to suffer.

Acting is one element in a film. Directing is sort of the painter using all of those elements - sound and music and camera and putting it all together. And that can be fun and exciting. If you fail, it's incredibly upsetting - much more upsetting than when you're an actor. But when you succeed it's incredibly, incredibly exciting, so I like the risk of it all.

I don't sleep much. Five to six, I'd say. You could argue that people, as they get older, sleep less - probably because they're afraid of dying at some point. I know my parents don't sleep much. I know that I used to be able to sleep until noon when I was younger. I couldn't fathom staying in bed until ten now. I wouldn't know what to do unless there's a football game on.

I've walked with very famous people down red carpets over to the crowd of thousands of people, and you'll reach out to shake their hand and they've got a camera in their hand. And they don't even get their hand out, because they're recording the whole time.

I enjoy directing. I don't know whether it's improving or not, but it's certainly evolving in different directions.

When you start out as an actor, you read a script thinking of it at its best. But that's not usually the case in general, and usually what you have to do is you have to read a script and think of it at its worst. You read it going, "OK, how bad could this be?" first and foremost. You cannot make a good film out of a bad script. You can make a bad film out of a good script, but you can't make a good film out of a bad script.

I'm so lucky to have been raised the way I have, because my parents believed that everyone had the right to their own feelings, opinions, and existence; as long as they weren't harming others, you had to defend those rights.

I do know something about the news world. I was sitting on the floors of newsrooms since I was seven years old, and I've been around them my whole life. I understand that someone looks at a story with famous people in it, and you want to put it out.

We're picking on people we can beat.

The secret of directing is working with really good people.

They say I was a bad Batman, that it was my fault, that I buried the franchise. But the truth is, it was a big project. I was pretty intimidated in that world. I did the best I could in the situation I was given.

Peace is a fulltime job. It's protecting civilians, overseeing elections, and disarming ex-combatants. Peace, like war, must be waged.

I've certainly done some turkeys along the way and made some dumb choices in my career, mostly early on. I'm one of the lucky ones who got to make a lot of mistakes very early when no one was paying attention.

I think one of the major misconceptions about me is that I live my life the way people think I lead my life, with hot and cold drinks running everywhere and a party all the time. They think of my life in terms of certain excesses that don't really exist. Things are actually fairly simple.

I grew up in a family of storytellers, but Google has destroyed us because you can fact-check everything. We'd always like the stories to be a little better than they were.

My father taught me about having principles and how to treat people with respect. My aunt also taught me how to keep a perspective on everything that happens to you. So you learn to be humble and not take your success for granted.

I want to be the George Clooney of music.

Without question, I wake every night five times.

I rarely tell anybody what they should be doing with their life.

I use my film-making to work through my deep questions and my deep problems. I think I could watch each film and tell you exactly which part of my psyche I'm trying to work out.

The hardest thing is trying not to correct everything on the Internet. It'd be night and day - wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. So you just have to say, 'All right, I'll take it, bring it on.'

The best lesson my mom taught me was how to be scrappy.

In 2003, a lot of us were saying, 'Where is the link between Saddam and bin Laden What does Iraq have to do with 911 Which is why it drives me crazy to hear all these Democrats saying, 'We were misled.' It makes me want to shout, 'F
you, you weren't misled.' You were afraid of being called unpatriotic.

The script for this film was written 52 years ago by Edward R. Murrow, who taught us many valuable lessons about responsibility and always, always questioned authority, because without it authority often goes unchecked.

If we turn our heads and look away and hope that it will all disappear then they will - all of them, an entire generation of people. And we will have only history left to judge us.

The directors are always sharp. It's true.

I don't care. Charlton Heston is the head of the National Rifle Association. He deserves whatever anyone says about him.

If you want to protect yourself as an actor, always work with good people

I certainly direct with confidence even if I'm not confident. I learned early on as an actor that confidence can be faked, and it's not always a terrible thing to do. A lot of times if people feel you're confident, then they're confident.

Over the years, over the history of our country, liberals have stood on many of the right sides of the issues.

Life's better with company. Everybody needs a co-pilot.

For me, the definition of a patriot is someone who is willing to constantly question the government; that's what separates us from other countries.

It's fun to slap people around.

In the time that we're here today, more women and children will die violently in the Darfur region than in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Israel or Lebanon. So, after September 30, you won't need the UN - you will simply need men with shovels and bleached white linen and headstones.

I had my Aunt Rosie, who was famous and then not, so I got a lesson in fame early on. And I understood how little it has to do with you. And also how you could use it.

I think the reason why a lot of young people are such screw ups ... is oftentimes they didn't have the luxury I had of forming important relationships and opinions and life experiences before having success.

If you think back , the Academy was doing a better job. Think about how many more African Americans were nominated.We need to get better at this. We used to be better at it.

It is a question in that case of breaking up one piece of art, and whether that piece of art can be as best as possible put back together. So it's an argument to say, maybe that's one of those instances, like the bust of Nefertiti, I think that should be given back [Egyptian piece currently in Neues Museum in Berlin]. It's one of those pieces you look at and think that would probably be the right thing to do.

Hosting is work. It means you don't get to go up to your room and disappear and take a nap. Like everybody else does after lunch. I'm talking about hosting, not hosting a dinner party, but hosting people staying in your home.

I didn't enjoy working with Bill [Murray]. We fought a lot ... but I've let go of some of the anger and we seem to get along fine now.

After a while, you just want transportation, and things like cool cars or motorcycles are all about getting attention. I get all the attention I could ever need, so I kind of like being in a minivan and people not paying so much attention to me.

I think anyone who is famous is a moron if they're on Twitter. It's just stupid.

Look, it's very easy to sit here right now with some films in the bank that I like and think I have a shot and feel pretty cocky. But, you know, three years from now, I could very easily be saying, 'Paper or plastic?'

I would vote for Johnny Depp. We could use a president that could swashbuckle.

You have to remember that in the microcosm of Cincinnati, Ohio, through northern Kentucky, my father was a big star, still is. So that made my sister and me really visible. Everybody knew us, talked about us.

It's not that I lead this oblivious life where I think I've got such a great personality that people want to spend time with me. If someone has a poster of you or asks for your autograph, clearly you can't take them out on a date. It's not that interesting if someone is just interested in you.

I love children and I get along with them great. It's just that I believe if you're going to be a parent, there has to be something inside you that says, 'I want a family.' I don't feel that sense of urgency.

I don't think that Hollywood will have much to do with changing politics. Hollywood usually reflects things.

It is astonishing that gay and lesbian Americans are still treated as second-class citizens. I am confident that, very soon, the laws of this nation will reflect the basic truth that gay and lesbian people - like all human beings - are born equal in dignity and rights.

I'm not out trying to prove anything. I'm sort of finished with that, so I get to play in other sandboxes and try and figure out what I like and I'm interested in.

There are some scenes that you have to lose in order to win something at the end. A good director will keep pointing you that way, but it is also your job as an actor to understand that there are scenes that you do, particularly when you are the lead, where other people get to come in and steal and you have to let them. I understand that but a good director always reminds you where those moments are.

We're in a strange state in our world where we sort of have that belief - and I have it too - that if it's written down there's got to be some truth in it. We haven't quite got to the spot where you go: "Well, it doesn't necessarily mean it's true." It could actually be completely made up and made to look very nice. So, we have to get to the point where scandal and those kinds of things are less and less important because otherwise we won't have anyone willing to run as politicians.

I know love at first sight can work. It happened to my parents.

What I try to do is make sure that the directors I'm working with are on the same page and want to do the same kind of films. You can really protect yourself as an actor if you work with really good people. It can hide a lot of flaws along the way.

If there is such a thing as platonic love between a man and a woman it is the result of a profound misunderstanding, a stifling of their true and authentic impulses.

The best advice I got from my aunt, the great singer Rosemary Clooney, and from my dad, who was a game show host and news anchor, was: don't wake up at seventy years old sighing over what you should have tried. Just do it, be willing to fail, and at least you gave it a shot. That's echoed for me all through the last few years.

I'm certainly the last person to give advice on, well, anything.

I know what my limitations are as an actor, but my strength is putting myself into a well-written part. When I get in trouble is when I have to fix it, or when I have to carry it on personality.

Everyone makes moral choices that better themselves and hurt someone else along the way - and whether or not the means justify the ends. And that, to me, is universal.

The rehearsal process in general is about trusting one another.

Who would name their kid Jack with the last words 'off' at the end of the last name? No wonder that guy is screwed up.

I don't believe in happy endings, but I do believe in happy travels, because ultimately, you die at a very young age, or you live long enough to watch your friends die. It's a mean thing, life.

I'm kind of comfortable with getting older because it's better than the other option, which is being dead. So I'll take getting older.

I'm the son of a newsman, I grew up around news, so I can understand the issue, which is that papers are losing subscribers and they're getting less and less outlets ... it's a tricky thing. You're going to have to sell papers. The problem is, there's so little reporting anymore.

I'm not smart enough and I don't know enough about what's going on.

The funniest thing is that all the things every director goes through, I thought I could shortcut, but there was no getting around those issues.

Whatever you do, don't wake up at 65 years old and think about what you should have done with your life.

We're in a tight spot!

When you go to Detroit you see a town that is resilient, that's just fighting to win again, and there's an energy to that. Just watching a city really fighting to get back on its feet and watching the inner strength of a city is tremendous.

Hollywood still makes things. We still export a couple billion dollars' worth of product overseas. Original, new product. Some people might not agree that it's original or new, but basically it is.

I watch 'Batman & Robin' from time to time. It's the worst movie I ever made, so it's a good lesson in humility.

When you see Hitler burning paintings by Salvador Dali and Picasso he's telling you that this time period and these men and this culture didn't exist, and I've seen that happen in other countries, Sudan for instance, it's not enough to kill them you have to destroy all of their markings that they left that was their history.

There's a funny thing about fame. The truth is you run as fast as you can towards it because it's everything you want. Not just the fame but what it represents, meaning work, meaning opportunity. And then you get there, and it's shocking how immediately you become enveloped in this world that is incredibly restricting.

Let's face it: Bush is just dim.

My parents were disappointed I didn't finish college, and they were really upset when I went to Hollywood to become an actor. I was a big disappointment to them.

Never get behind old people. Their bodies are littered with hidden metal and they never seem to appreciate how little time they have left

If you're in the room, you've grabbed the brass ring. You are all winners.

It's very hard when the product your selling to an entire country is yourself and you're just selling the hell out of it all the time. But politicians have a tremendous amount of ego to be able to do it.

Fame can be very dangerous, because you can start to enjoy that part of it. And that's not the good part of what I do for a living. The good part is the making of films. The unpleasant part is the fame part, if you're not careful.

Getting older is not something that you're not much concerned with.