VENICE, Italy (AP) — George Clooney just makes sense in Venice.
Like many people, he considers it one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Unlike most, however, he also owns a 15-bedroom villa a few hours away on Lake Como that famously co-starred in “Ocean’s Twelve.”
In the nearly 30 years since he attended his first Venice Film Festival with “Out of Sight,” he’s become something of a fixture. It’s a place where he’s enjoyed many significant
moments, from his wedding at the Aman Venice to the debut of “Good Night, and Good Luck,” which earned him his first Oscar nomination for best director.
Last year he attended with “Jay Kelly,” in which he plays a movie star who travels to Italy for a lifetime achievement award. Life will imitate art this year as Clooney receives the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement Award on the festival’s opening day.
Here is a look back at some of Clooney’s most memorable Venice moments.
As legend has it, Clooney’s long term love affair with Venice began with the festival’s premiere of Steven Soderbergh’s Elmore Leonard adaptation “Out of Sight.” Then 37 and doing press alongside Jennifer Lopez, the actor would also make another big jump soon: Leaving “ER” the following February.
This Coen brothers joint, co-starring Catherine Zeta-Jones, premiered out of competition at the 60th Venice Film Festival, alongside titles like “Matchstick Men,” “Once Upon a Time in Mexico” and “The Dreamers." Clooney’s nearby Italian residence was already as famous as him, and a stakeout spot for amateur and professional paparazzi.
In a profile that fall, while shooting “Ocean’s Twelve,” Vanity Fair writer Ned Zeman observed: “That an affable, self-effacing Kentucky-born Hollywood actor is fast becoming the most popular public figure in Italy says a little about Italy and a lot about Clooney, who isn’t Italian, doesn’t speak Italian, and lives here only in summertime.”
Clooney’s acclaimed black-and-white dramatization of journalist Edward R. Murrow’s clash with Joseph McCarthy began its successful run in competition at the 62nd Venice Film Festival. Though it lost the Golden Lion to Ang Lee’s “Brokeback Mountain,” it did go on to pick up six Oscar nominations including for Clooney’s directing.
During the trip, he also inspired a cocktail still served at the ritzy Hotel Cipriani on Giudecca. One night he retreated to the hotel’s Bar Gabbiano where his friend, the legendary bar manager Walter Bolzonella, mixed him a drink of lemon, sugar, vodka, cranberry juice, ginger and Angostura bitters and named it Buona Notte in honor of the film. The two would later name a prosecco, passionfruit and elderflower cocktail La Nina after Clooney’s mother, which was served at his wedding.
Tony Gilroy’s “Michael Clayton,” which nabbed Clooney an Oscar nomination for his turn as the titular law firm fixer, played in competition at Venice. The top prize went again to an Ang Lee film: “Lust, Caution,” which also beat out the likes of “I’m Not There,” “Atonement” and “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.”
This Coen brothers comedy featuring Clooney and Brad Pitt opted to debut out of competition in the opening night slot. Clooney said it completed his “trilogy of idiots” for the Coens, following “Intolerable Cruelty” and “O Brother, Where Art Thou?”
“Looking at the parts we are playing, I’m very concerned about what you think of us,” Clooney said at the press conference. Pitt, who’d won the festival’s acting prize the year prior, added: “Like George … I’m not sure if I should be flattered or insulted.”
Another opening night, out of competition slot debut for this Clooney-directed campaign thriller starring Ryan Gosling and Philip Seymour Hoffman. As usual, Clooney was peppered with political questions in which he observed that, “It’s a very difficult time to govern.”
Alfonso Cuarón’s “Gravity” opened the 70th edition of the Venice Film Festival before going on to win seven Oscars. Clooney, of course, attended the premiere alongside Sandra Bullock and he was self-deprecating about his role: “There were only two parts and Sandy had the other one, so I felt like this was the only one I could get away with.”
Venice's canals were packed with paparazzi for the wedding of one of Hollywood’s favorite bachelors. On Sept. 27, Clooney, then 53, and Amal Alamuddin, then 36, exchanged vows in front of 100 of their closest friends and family, including Bono and Matt Damon, at the luxury hotel Aman Grand Canal, originally a grand palazzo built in 1550. She wore a custom Oscar de la Renta dress, of French lace, pearls and diamanté accents. He wore a black wool/cashmere Giorgio Armani tuxedo.
Clooney returned to the festival with another of his directing projects, “Suburbicon,” a dark comedic satire about a seemingly idyllic 1950s community with Damon and Julianne Moore. This festival was especially notable for it being the Clooneys’ first public appearance since the birth of their twins, Alexander and Ella, a few months prior.
This time George was the plus one to Amal, who was receiving an award from the Diane von Furstenberg and The Diller-von Furstenberg Family Foundation for her work as a human rights lawyer. The power couple gave the festival some much-needed star power amid the actors' strike with an appearance at the adjacent DVF Awards. “I am here in Venice with my husband; he is a rising star,” she said that night. “I just wanted to say, you, my love, like this city, take my breath away.”
Clooney and Pitt reunited for the Jon Watts action comedy “Wolfs,” which played out of competition. But the spotlight was less on the film and more on the off-screen drama of the Apple TV-produced film only getting a limited theatrical release, and his then-recent New York Times op-ed urging U.S. President Joe Biden to end his reelection bid.
“The person who should be applauded is the president who did the most selfless thing anyone’s done since George Washington,” Clooney said. “All the machinations that got us there, none of that’s going to be remembered. And it shouldn’t be. What should be remembered is the selfless act.”
In “Jay Kelly,” Clooney played a very Clooney-esque movie star on a self-reflective journey through Europe. He was absent from the press conference with co-stars Laura Dern, Adam Sandler and Billy Crudup due to a sinus infection, but he rallied for the red carpet premiere, cutting a glamorous figure with Amal by his side.
During the making of “Jay Kelly,” filmmaker Noah Baumbach had to put together a montage of that character’s career, which would play during a tribute ceremony. While it’s well-established that Clooney is definitely not Jay Kelly, in this case, he was. The montage was made entirely from Clooney’s own films — a surprise to the actor who had no idea what was coming when he sat down in the theater to film the movie's last scene.
Clooney was taken aback, first by all the “bad haircuts” and then by the realization of just how much time had passed.
“There’s a line in this film, ‘All my memories are movies,’” Clooney told the AP. “That’s not true with me. But my memories of movies are not the scenes or the movie. It’s the experience.”
He added: “What a lucky life I’ve lived.”
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