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GEORGE CLOONEY BIOGRAPHY |
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The son of broadcast journalist Nick Clooney and
the nephew of famed singer Rosemary Clooney, Clooney was born
May 6, 1961, in Lexington, KY. He made his first television
appearance at age five, on his father's talk show, The Nick
Clooney Show. He did not show up again on television until he
was in his early twenties; growing up, Clooney had a passion for
baseball and only turned to acting after a failed tryout with
the Cincinnati Reds. He started out in television commercials
and then signed with Warner Bros. Up until E.R., Clooney had
played only occasional roles in feature films (he made his debut
with a small role in the 1986 movie Combat High) and had starred
in a couple of low-budget videos. When hospital drama series ER
hit American TV screens in 1994, George Clooney finally achieved
the "overnight" success that he'd been working solidly towards
for more than a decade. As maverick paediatrician Dr Doug Ross,
he won over the hearts of millions. Following E.R.'s success,
however, he found himself besieged by scripts and movie offers.
For his first big-budget project, he chose to play an action
hero in the Quentin Tarantino-written and -produced schlock
horror extravaganza From Dusk Till Dawn. After that, he appeared
in the romantic comedy One Fine Day opposite Michelle Pfeiffer.
For Clooney, 1997 proved to be a good year, as he appeared in
three major films, the most hyped of which was Batman & Robin,
with the actor replacing Val Kilmer as the mysterious Dark
Knight. Though the film is widely considered the worst of the
big-screen Batman series, Clooney did receive some praise for
bringing an extra sensitivity to his interpretation of Batman.
He received greater praise the following year, with roles in two
wildly divergent films, Out of Sight, in which he played a suave
bank robber, and Terrence Malick's adaptation of The Thin Red
Line.
In 1999, following his much-talked-about departure from E.R. he
continued to work on a number of high-profile projects, first
lending his voice to the animated South Park: Bigger, Longer,
and Uncut and then starring alongside Mark Wahlberg and Ice Cube
as an American soldier reclaiming Kuwaiti treasure from Saddam
Hussein in David O. Russell's Three Kings. George Clooney was
awarded a 2000 Golden Globe for his portrayal of a pomade-obsessed
escaped convict in the Coen brothers' throwback comedy O Brother
Where Art Thou? It was around this time that Clooney, now an
established actor equally as comfortable on the big screen as
the small, began to branch out as the Executive Producer of such
made-for-TV efforts as Killroy (1999) and Fail Safe (2000). Soon
producing such features as Rock Star (2001) and Insomnia (2002),
Clooney next re-teamed with Out of Sight director Steven
Soderbergh for a modern take on a classic Rat Pack comedy with
Ocean's Eleven (2001). After the dynamic film duo stuck together
for yet another remake, the deep-space psychological science-fiction
drama Solaris (2002), busy Clooney would both produce and appear
in Welcome to Collinwood and Confessions of a Dangerous Mind
later the same year, also making his directorial debut on the
latter. |
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