George Clooney

George Timothy Clooney (born May 6, 1961) is an American actor and filmmaker.

He is the recipient of numerous accolades, including a British Academy Film Award, four Golden Globe Awards, and two Academy Awards.

Clooney was born on May 6, 1961, in Lexington, Kentucky.

His mother, Nina Bruce (née Warren), was a beauty queen and city councilwoman.

His father, Nick Clooney, is a former anchorman and television host, including five years on the AMC network.

Clooney is of Irish, German, and English ancestry.

His maternal great-great-great-great-grandmother, Mary Ann Sparrow, was the half-sister of Nancy Lincoln, mother of President Abraham Lincoln, making Clooney and President Lincoln half-first cousins five times removed.

Clooney has an older sister named Adelia (known as Ada).

Cabaret singer and actress Rosemary Clooney was an aunt.

Through Rosemary, his cousins include actors Miguel Ferrer, Rafael Ferrer, and Gabriel Ferrer, who is married to singer Debby Boone.

He attended St. Michael's School in Worthington, Ohio; then Western Row Elementary School (a public school) in Mason, Ohio, from 1968 to 1974; and St. Susanna School in Mason, where he served as an altar boy.

The Clooneys moved back to Kentucky when George was midway through the seventh grade.

In middle school, Clooney developed Bell's palsy, a medical condition that partially paralyzes the face.

The malady went away within a year.

In an interview with Larry King, he stated that "yes, it goes away. It takes about nine months to go away. It was the first year of high school, which was a bad time for having half your face paralyzed."

He also described one positive outcome of the condition: "It's probably a great thing that it happened to me because it forced me to engage in a series of making fun of myself. And I think that's an important part of being famous. The practical jokes have to be aimed at you."

After his parents moved to Augusta, Kentucky, Clooney attended Augusta High School.

He has stated that he earned all As and a B in school, and played baseball and basketball.

He tried out to play professional baseball with the Cincinnati Reds in 1977, but he did not pass the first round of player cuts and was not offered a contract.

Clooney's first role was as an extra in the television mini-series Centennial in 1978, which was based on the novel of the same name by James A. Michener and was partly filmed in Clooney's hometown of Augusta, Kentucky.

He attended Northern Kentucky University from 1979 to 1981, majoring in broadcast journalism, and very briefly attended the University of Cincinnati, but did not graduate from either.

He earned money selling women's shoes, insurance door to door, stocking shelves, working in construction, and cutting tobacco.

Clooney's first major role came in 1984 in the short-lived CBS sitcom E/R (not to be confused with ER, the long-running medical drama).

He played a handyman on the series The Facts of Life and appeared as Bobby Hopkins, a detective, on an episode of The Golden Girls.

Clooney started his career in television, gaining wide recognition in his role as Dr. Doug Ross on the NBC medical drama ER from 1994 to 1999, for which he received two Primetime Emmy Award nominations.

He expanded to leading roles in films, with his breakthrough role in From Dusk till Dawn (1996) followed by Batman & Robin (1997), Out of Sight (1998), Three Kings (1999), The Perfect Storm (2000) and O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000).

Clooney was raised a strict Roman Catholic but said in 1998 that he did not know if he believed "in Heaven or even God."

He has said, "Yes, we were Catholic, big-time, whole family, whole group."

He began his education at the Blessed Sacrament School in Fort Mitchell, Kentucky.

Greater stardom came from his starring role in Soderbergh's Ocean's film series from 2001 to 2007.

Clooney made his directorial debut with the spy drama Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002), and has since directed the historical drama Good Night, and Good Luck (2005), the political drama The Ides of March (2011), the war film The Monuments Men (2014), the science fiction film The Midnight Sky (2020) and the biographical sports drama The Boys in the Boat (2023).

Clooney won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for the thriller Syriana (2005), and earned Best Actor nominations for the legal thriller Michael Clayton (2007), and the comedy-dramas Up in the Air (2009) and The Descendants (2011).

Clooney was included on Time annual Time 100 list, which identifies the most influential people in the world, every year from 2006 to 2009.

He has also starred in Burn After Reading (2008), The American (2010), Gravity (2013), Hail, Caesar! (2016) and Ticket to Paradise (2022).

As of 2023, Clooney is one of four people to have been nominated for Academy Awards in six different categories (a distinction shared with Walt Disney, Alfonso Cuarón and Kenneth Branagh).

He is also noted for his political and economic activism, and has served as one of the United Nations Messengers of Peace since 2008.

Clooney is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

He is married to human rights lawyer Amal Clooney.

He received the Academy Award for Best Picture for co-producing the political thriller Argo (2012).

Clooney has been honored with the Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2015, the Honorary César in 2017, AFI Life Achievement Award in 2018, and the Kennedy Center Honors in 2022.