Clooney Shares Father's Life Rule at Venice Masterclass — SkimNews
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- George Clooney held a wide-ranging Venice Film Festival masterclass on Thursday, revealing a rule from his father that he said he tries to live by: 'I don't care. You have one responsibility, and that is to challenge people with more power than you, and to defend people with less power than you.'
- Clooney said he 'got successful at 33, not at 23,' and credited that late start with allowing him to make mistakes in private and work across genres without being pigeon-holed into one type of movie.
- Clooney confirmed he will begin filming 'In Love' — an Amy Bloom memoir adaptation directed by Paul Weitz — in a matter of weeks, co-starring Annette Bening.
- Clooney said luck plays a 'gigantic part' in success, recounting that NBC's ER was one of two TV pilots he was sent at the time and he happened to pick the hit: 'The best actors from my early acting classes are not big stars… You have to end up being the right person, the right place, the right time.'
- Clooney tied his father's rule directly to his humanitarian work with wife Amal Clooney, saying the couple spends 'a good portion of our lives' through their foundation helping get detained journalists out of prisons in authoritarian countries.
- Before entering entertainment, Clooney worked on a Kentucky tobacco farm and sold insurance, encouraged into acting by his actor cousin Miguel Ferrer.
- In an emotional coda, Clooney recalled the death of his sister from cancer last year and said being with her at the end taught him 'time goes fast… we have to find nothing but joy.'
Why it matters: At 65, Clooney used one of cinema's most-watched platforms to frame the Clooney Foundation's journalist-freeing work as a direct extension of a personal moral rule passed down by his father — turning a career retrospective into advocacy for press freedom. He's also about to start a new film with Annette Bening, keeping his on-screen work active alongside that off-screen mission.
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