Words by George Clooney is one of Hollywood’s most recognizable leading men, but his career is unusual for its breadth. He has been a television star, an Oscar-winning actor and producer, a director and screenwriter, and an advocate for human rights.
Early life
George Timothy Clooney was born on May 6, 1961, in Lexington, Kentucky. His father, Nick Clooney, was a television news anchor and host, and his aunt was the singer Rosemary Clooney. He grew up largely in Kentucky and Ohio, attended Northern Kentucky University briefly and moved to Los Angeles in the early 1980s to try acting.
The long road to stardom
For more than a decade, Clooney worked steadily in television without breaking through. He appeared in sitcoms such as The Facts of Life and Roseanne and in a string of pilots that didn’t become series.
That changed in 1994 with ER, the NBC hospital drama, in which he played pediatrician Doug Ross. The show became one of the most watched series on television, and Clooney earned Emmy and Golden Globe nominations.
Movie star
While still on ER, he moved into film with From Dusk Till Dawn (1996) and Batman & Robin (1997). His performance in Steven Soderbergh’s Out of Sight (1998) won critical praise and began a long collaboration with the director.
The Coen brothers cast him in O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), which earned him a Golden Globe. Soderbergh’s Ocean’s Eleven (2001) and its sequels made him a box-office draw.
Oscars
Clooney won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for Syriana (2005), a political thriller about the oil industry. The same year, he was nominated for directing and co-writing Good Night, and Good Luck, a film about broadcaster Edward R. Murrow’s confrontation with Sen. Joseph McCarthy. He became the first person nominated for Oscars in acting and directing for different films in the same year.
He won a second Oscar as a producer of Argo (2012), which took Best Picture.
He has also received acclaim for Michael Clayton (2007), Up in the Air (2009) and The Descendants (2011), each earning him a Best Actor nomination.
Director and producer
Clooney’s directing credits include Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002), The Ides of March (2011), The Monuments Men (2014), The Midnight Sky (2020) and The Boys in the Boat (2023). With producing partner Grant Heslov, he runs Smokehouse Pictures.
In 2025 he made his Broadway debut in a stage adaptation of Good Night, and Good Luck, playing Murrow, which earned him a Tony nomination. Its live television broadcast on CNN drew a large audience.
Business
In 2013, Clooney co-founded Casamigos tequila with Rande Gerber and Mike Meldman. The brand was sold to Diageo in 2017 in a deal worth up to $1 billion, one of the most successful celebrity spirits ventures.
Humanitarian work
Clooney has been an advocate for human rights for years. He drew attention to the conflict in Darfur and co-founded the Satellite Sentinel Project to monitor violence in Sudan. With Amal Clooney, a human rights lawyer, he founded the Clooney Foundation for Justice in 2016, which supports legal accountability for human rights abuses. He co-founded The Sentry, an investigative organization that tracks money linked to war crimes.
In 2008 he was named a United Nations Messenger of Peace. He received a Kennedy Center Honor in 2022.
Why he matters
Clooney represents an older Hollywood ideal: a charismatic leading man who uses his fame to make films he cares about and to support causes beyond entertainment. His career shows that persistence through years of near-misses can lead to lasting success.
For more profiles of actors and filmmakers, visit our People section.
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