George Clooney Quotations

I can't give you 150 takes. I can't even give you 30 different ways of doing it! I don't have the talent or the range for it.

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.

It's possible for me to make a bad movie out of a good script, but I can't make a good movie from a bad script.

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 find that as you get older, you start to simplify things in general.

I enjoy going on motorcycle trips and stopping in small towns and enjoying drinks with the locals.

In doing the screenplay for 'Good Night, and Good Luck,' the most important thing for me was to constantly go back to wherever the opposition would argue. So I had to keep reading all the books and articles about why McCarthy is such a good guy.

You never really learn much from hearing yourself talk.

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.

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

I bought a piano once because I had the dream of playing As Time Goes By as some girl's leaning on it drinking a martini. Great image. But none of it worked out. I can't even play Chopsticks. But I've got a nice piano at my house!

I love my grey hair and wrinkles. I love the fact that my face has more of an edge and more character than it did when I was in my twenties and thirties. No Botox for me.

I had to stop going to auditions thinking, 'Oh, I hope they like me.' I had to go in thinking I was the answer to their problem.

I think you should automatically donate your organs because that would turn the balance of organ donation in a huge way. I would donate whatever anybody would take, and I'd probably do the cremation bit.

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.

It's incredibly unfair. You don't see a lot of 60-year-old women with 20-year-old men onscreen.

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.

If people see me having dinner with a beautiful woman, they immediately believe that I'm having a love affair with her. Of course that's rubbish. I'm not a playboy!

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.

I was very lucky to get well known much later in life. You need to have flopped quite a few times to get a sense of how little any of it has to do with you.

I grew up in the world of bad television, on my dad's sets and then as a young schmuck on dating shows and so on.

You make a lot of films, do you? You make a lot of films yourself? Yeah, I'd like to see you make a film first before you get to talk about it. What a jerk.

I don't like to share my personal life... it wouldn't be personal if I shared it.

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

The simple truth is that everyone has an opinion, everyone has the right to voice it, and they should if they want to.

When you're young you believe it when people tell you how good you are. And that's the danger, you inhale. Everyone will tell you you're a genius, which you are not, and if you understand that, you win.

There is a strange pecking order among actors. Theatre actors look down on film actors, who look down on TV actors. Thank God for reality shows, or we wouldn't have anybody to look down on.

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.

I'm the old-fashioned type who prefers to meet a woman in a more normal setting. I don't like to feel that I'm being hunted down. I've always liked to do my own hunting when it comes to meeting women.

It's very easy for people to be critical of President Obama's first term, but let's face it, he didn't exactly inherit the country in the best shape.

Directing is really exciting. In the end, it's more fun to be the painter than the paint.

I had a Tesla. I was one of the first cats with a Tesla. But I'm telling you, I've been on the side of the road a while in that thing.

I like owning dirt. You know, I spent a lot of time broke when I moved to California. So deep in my soul is still this idea of being unemployed. To me, owning land means you could sell it at some point and have money.

I believe in all the qualities of being a liberal. I keep going back to all the great social events in our country's history, starting with the Salem witch trials, where the conservative view was that they're witches and should be burned at the stake, and the liberal view was there's no such thing as witches.

Anyone would be lying if they said they didn't get lonely at times.

On Christmas morning, before we could open our Christmas presents, we would go to this stranger's home and bring them presents. I remember helping clean the house up and putting up a tree. My father believed that you have a responsibility to look after everyone else.

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.

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.

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.

I probably wouldn't be a good spokesman for an electric car, because I'll still get on a private jet, and one flight on a private jet undoes all my electric-car good deeds.

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.

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.

An acting career usually has about a shelf life of ten years before people get sick of seeing you. It's a good thing to have a job to fall back on and I really do enjoy directing.

The first thing that I learned - and I understood it at a really young age - was that I could get a laugh. Really early. Because my mother and father are funny.

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.

After doing One Fine Day and playing a pediatrician on ER, I'll never have kids. I'm going to have a vasectomy.

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.

Run for office? No. I've slept with too many women, I've done too many drugs, and I've been to too many parties.

It's not about an opening weekend. It's about a career, building a set of films you're proud of. Period.

I don't tweet, I don't go on Facebook. I think there's too much information about all of us out there. I'm liking the idea of privacy more and more.

I go on YouTube when somebody says to look something up.

I was in a bar and I said to a friend, 'You know, we've become those 40-year-old guys we used to look at and say, 'Isn't it sad?'

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

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.

The problem is, we elected a manager and we need a leader. Let's face it: Bush is just dim.

Yes, I slouch. My mother tells me that.

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.

Directing is much more satisfying to me than acting.

I do happen to have a good life... But I also like to work. I feel like I got the brass ring and I got very lucky in this.

I'm a Method actor. I spent years training for the drinking and carousing I had to do in this film.

When you first start out, you are just happy to get a job, any job. And as time goes on, either you move forward or screech to a halt.

You have only a short period of time in your life to make your mark, and I'm there now.

I've been lucky enough to do a few films that will last longer than an opening weekend and those films are the ones I'm proud of.

My life isn't focused on results. My life is really focused on the process of doing all the things I'm doing, from work to relationships to friendships to charitable work.

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.

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.

My grandparents back in Kentucky owned a tobacco farm. So, to make money in the summer, we could cut and chop and top and house and strip the tobacco.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I've been working with Pat Robertson on Africa debt-relief, and we disagree on virtually everything except certain very specific, inalienable rights, and the truth is that morality and patriotism come in all shapes and sizes.

The government itself is running exactly like the Sopranos and they sit back and they make deals. And they say okay, 'I'm going do this: France, you're getting the pipelines.'

I enjoy living in a nice house and having a nice life. So I do two or three commercials overseas a year to sort of fill in, because they pay pretty well.

I'd think, 'In a relationship, we should never have his kind of fight.' Then, instead of figuring out how to make it work, I looked for a way to get out of it. The truth is, you shouldn't be married if your that kind of person.

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.

I'm only two years older than Brad Pitt, but I look a lot older, which used to greatly frustrate me. It doesn't anymore. I don't have to fit into that category and get trounced by Tom Cruise and Brad.

I've been my most happy and my most unhappy in relationships. I have family and friends and people I care very much about. I've got a really, really, really good life.

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.

My father was and is a great journalist. Thirty years ago, I was studying broadcasting in college, and the problem was I wasn't nearly as good as my father. I wasn't as quick or as smart as my old man, and I realized it would be a long time before I was ever going to be, and I decided to do something else.

On an awards-show day, I can play basketball, go in, take a shower and put on a tux - it takes me three minutes to put on a tux - and be out the door in 15 minutes.

The people I've respected most in the industry over the years - Paul Newman, for instance. I just loved the way he handled growing old on-screen. It's understanding that you're now basically a character actor. Which is fine, but you have to pay attention to it.

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.

The last real movie stars were probably Redford and Newman. And things were different then. There wasn't this amazing amount of magazines and information about them.

The loneliest you will get is in the most public of arenas: You will go to a place and end up in the smallest compartment possible, because it's a distraction to everybody, and you end up not getting to enjoy it like everyone else.

Having 'Oscar winner' on your tombstone is a great thing.

I just found out about 10 days ago that I must live 300 or 400 yards from Britney Spears... so now I have to move.

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

Anytime there's an actual grassroots movement that isn't funded by people trying to create a grassroots movement, I find that interesting.

Growing old on screen is not for the faint of heart.

I did a lot of terrible TV shows and was really terrible in them, and I've done terrible films I was terrible in, but nobody really noticed.

I don't know if winning at any cost is wrong or not. There are times I've thought that the end justified the means.

I get asked a lot about getting into politics. I say, 'Take a look at politics. You tell me what seems appealing about that.'

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

If I had been with all the women that I was said to have been with, I wouldn't have had the time to shoot a single movie!

Most of the films I've done haven't done particularly well. I'm surprised I'm continuing to work.

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

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.

As you get older and ease your way into being a character actor you have to be comfortable with where you are in life and career, and I'm very comfortable with what I'm doing - working on projects I'm proud of.