Oscar-winning actor-filmmaker George Clooney says that as he grows older, he may concentrate less on acting and more on directing.
“I think nobody really wants to see anybody really aging” on-screen, the “Hail, Caesar!” star, 54, told the BBC. “It’s a very unforgiving thing, the camera is, and so aging becomes something that you try to do less and less on-screen. You try to pick the films that work best for you and as you age they become fewer and fewer.”
Clooney has been acting since the 1980s, moving from recurring roles in such sitcoms as “The Facts of Life” and “Roseanne” to a five-year stint in the ensemble of the medical drama “ER” to starring in films including “From Dusk Till Dawn” (1996), “The Perfect Storm,” “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” (both 2000), the “Ocean’s Eleven” trilogy (2001-2007) and “Syriana” (2005), for which he won a supporting-actor Oscar. Starting in 2002, he has directed five films, earning an Academy Award nomination for 2005’s “Good Night, and Good Luck.” Clooney also cowrote that movie, earning a screenwriting Oscar nomination, and two other films.
Directing, he told the BBC, “is my great love and I do enjoy it a lot. And I’ve had really great success and had some not-so-successful films, and that’s also part of the experience. But what I’ll say is, it’s really fun.”
And, he added: “As you age on-screen you get to that point where you really understand that you can’t stay in front of the camera for your whole life, and so it’s much more fun to be — and it’s [infinitely] more creative to be — directing.”
Clooney — who garnered best-actor Oscar nominations for “Michael Clayton” (2007), “Up in the Air” (2009) and “The Descendants” (2011) — next stars opposite Julia Roberts and Jack O’Connell (“Unbroken”) in director Jodie Foster’s real-time thriller “Money Monster,” due out May 13.
