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As Roberts feigned sleepy innocence, Weintraub searched her room. Then, hearing a door slam, he swung around to see Clooney and Damon hightailing it down the hall. On another night, Clooney rigged a bucket of water over Roberts's door -- only to soak a hapless bellman who entered first. "The pranks here," sighs Weintraub, "are akin to Animal House." As he approaches his 40th birthday on May 6, there's no question that George Clooney still likes to have his fun. "He's not immature, but he hasn't quite grown up yet," says Walter Bernstein, who wrote the screenplay for Fail Safe, the classic Cold War thriller Clooney reproduced as a live TV drama last year. "There's still something unformed about him." Julianna Margulies, his friend and former ER costar, has noticed too. "George," she says, "is a grown-up with a kid's heart." And a kid's attention span, some might argue, when it comes to love. Since his three-year marriage to his first (and only) wife, actress Talia Balsam, 42, ended in 1992, Clooney has never been desperate for a date, squiring such beauties as model and former MTV host Karen Duffy, 39, and actresses Dedee Pfeiffer (Michelle's sister), 37, and Brooke Langton, 30. But his most serious romance, a three-year live-in relationship with French model Céline Balitran, 26, ended when she moved out in 1999, citing his lack of commitment. ("I wanted to have a real family with children," Balitran told the French magazine Oh La! "But . . . it will never be the right time for George.") His latest girlfriend, 29-year-old English model and MTV Europe host Lisa Snowdon, spends most of her time in Europe. And even if she were more available, back-to-back movies -- including 1999's Three Kings, last year's The Perfect Storm and O Brother, Where Art Thou?, and now Ocean's 11 -- have kept Clooney stateside for months at a stretch. Right now, says his close friend, actor and writer Mark Adler, 34, "the longest, probably most well-nurtured relationship in George's life is Max" -- the 150-lb. potbellied pig Clooney has parented since the mid-'80s. Why can't Clooney commit? . . . "The why is easy," says another friend, Perfect Storm director Wolfgang Petersen. "If you really dig into it with him, it's his first marriage. I think it was an experience that kept him feeling like being single is just paradise." (Balsam, the daughter of actors Martin Balsam and Joyce Van Patten, has said Clooney "spent more time with his friends than me" during the marriage.) Looking back, Clooney told Playboy last year, he had "felt sort of cornered" by marriage. By the end he'd put on 25 lbs. and developed a stomach ulcer. "He has been extremely public about saying that he is never going to get married again," says Adler. "I don't think that he will. I think he really made an effort in his first marriage, and it really hurt him that it didn't work out. And he'll tell you, he wasn't very good at being a husband." Which is not to say that Clooney isn't a catch. Beyond the matinee-idol looks and fabled charm, "he's what we used to call a 'ride-back guy,' " says Three Kings producer Paul Junger Witt, "the one in Westerns who would ride back and get you if you were shot off your horse." Or simply couldn't pay your bills. While on ER, "we lost a lot of crew members to cancer," recalls Margulies. "George was the first person there by the family's side with money, if that's what they needed, or to help the children through school." Recently he dropped $1,000 into a pot that crew members on Ocean's use for a dollar-a-player lucky draw. And on the set of O Brother,recalls his costar Tim Blake Nelson, Clooney treated his castmates to shiny new mountain bikes. "He just showed up at my trailer one day and said, 'Here. It's a long way to the set every day, and I want you to have this,' " Nelson recalls. "It was so natural the way he did it and so low-key."
Clooney is equally generous with his gang of eight longtime friends -- including Adler, Spin City's Richard Kind, 44, and actor Tommy Hinkley, 40 -- whom he has known since his early days in Hollywood. An average Sunday at Casa de Clooney (as the actor calls his eight-bedroom house in the Hollywood Hills) begins with an early-morning ride on the Indian motorcycles Clooney bought "the boys" for Christmas in 1999. "His idea of a great day is playing basketball with his friends, having a barbecue, taking a steam and watching a basketball game that night," says Adler, who moved in with Clooney for two years after his own marriage broke up in 1995. At work too, Clooney is a
guy's guy. "We're just short of sitting in a room like in Jaws,
showing off our scars," says Ocean's costar Don Cheadle.
"It really is a guy's movie, and he's right at home in that
atmosphere." He's also at home in a 24-hour town like Vegas. Over six
weeks of shooting there, Clooney has been cruising the clubs (from the
Foundation Room at the top of the Mandalay Bay hotel to the ritzy V Bar at
the Venetian), chowing down at the upmarket steakhouse Prime and playing
golf nearly every morning before work. While filming a few scenes for Ocean's
in Florida in February, the longtime Cincinnati Reds fan stopped by spring
training, hanging out in the dugout to watch the Yankees train at Tampa's
Legends The dancers at Naked City, an Atlantic City strip club, might have made a similar observation. In town for yet another Ocean's location shoot, Clooney checked things out at the neon-lit joint before moving on to the Atlantic City Bar & Grill after 2 a.m., flanked by three of the club's dancers and at least one pal. "They were beautiful girls, dressed really well -- not cheesy," says Gino Garofalo, who owns the Bar & Grill and chatted with Clooney as the star -- blending with the crowd in khakis, a sweater and white baseball cap -- chomped on chicken fingers with hot sauce and washed it down with Jack Daniel's. Says Garofalo: "He was eating, partying and having a great time."
From People Magazine - May 7 2001 issue. |
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