George Clooney: Flying high but with his feet on the ground

George Clooney is an easy man to like.

He's a charmer – to women who adore him, to men who hope some of his olde-worlde courtesy will rub off on them and to film journalists, to whom he is a dream interview.

What I've always admired about Clooney is his bulls**t detector. He doesn't give it and won't accept it coming his way, either. What you get instead is a man who's come to stardom the hard way, who slogged his way to movies via a gruelling stint in television and who is revelling in his 15 minutes of fame.

What's more, he's making it work for him. Possessed of a deep social and political conscience, Clooney uses his clout to make movies that matter – at least to him. In between there is an array of crowd-pleasers – comedies, action flicks, romances, thrillers, farces – that pay the way and keep his star burnished and bright.

This week he can be seen in Up in the Air, playing Ryan Bingham, a corporate downsizer who travels across the United States firing people on behalf of large corporations.

For director Jason (Juno) Reitman, 48-year-old Clooney represented perfect casting. "If you're going to make a movie about a guy who fires people for a living and wants to live alone, he'd better be a darn charming actor," says Reitman.

"And there really isn't anyone better at that than George Clooney. The role was tailor-made for him."

These days Clooney can pick and choose his movies. An Oscar for Syriana four years ago and a nomination for Michael Clayton in 2007 has made him one of the most bankable actors on the planet.

Yet it wasn't always that way.

Clooney looks back on his salad days – and movies like 1994's The Harvest, starring his cousin Miguel Ferrer, in which he was barely noticeable as a lip-syncing transvestite – with a refreshing lack of bitterness.

Twenty years ago he was struggling to break into movies and landed an audition for the role of cowboy JD in Thelma and Louise.

He didn't land the role. Instead it went to another unknown: 27-year-old Brad Pitt.

"There were only a couple of us at that point, and he got it. I didn't know who he was. I didn't see the movie for a couple of years because I knew that was a great part.

"It ended, of course, being the break-out part of all time.

"I couldn't get in the door of films. There really was this chasm between films and television.

"I remember I went in and read one line on Guarding Tess underneath Nic Cage. One line!"

Everything changed when he was cast as Dr Doug Ross in ER.

The show regularly picked up audiences in the tens of millions and allowed Clooney to segue, apparently seamlessly, into movies.

His star quality was evident in early hits like From Dusk Till Dawn, but Clooney came a cropper with Batman & Robin.

He sank the franchise. He describes that movie – an infamous flop – as his "moment of clarity".

"There's an interesting thing about being a movie star," he recalls. "You're suddenly in that position that few people get in: that you're going to get a film made.

"Suddenly you are not just being held responsible for your performance, but that the film is being made at all.

"Once I realised that, which was on Batman & Robin, I realised that I'd better start picking better. The next three films were Out of Sight, Three Kings and O Brother, Where Art Thou?"

He adds: "On a TV show 44 million people can see you for free. They see you every week and get to know you personally.

"So it's very hard to then say 'Okay, now you're gonna pay 12 bucks to go out and see me.'

"People said 'He's not gonna have a film career, he's a TV guy.' The turning point was the year that I left because The Perfect Storm was a hit and O Brother... was a hit critically. I got a lot of credit for The Perfect Storm. It was a movie about a wave, nothing to do with me, but I had gotten so much sh*t for Batman & Robin I said, 'Okay I'll take all the credit'. But again there's lucky timing."

Clooney has a big thing about luck. He grew up with famous people like his father, TV news anchorman Nick Clooney and his aunt, singer Rosemary Clooney.

He muses that his aunt was a star one day and the next her career was over.

"It wasn't because she was any less of a singer. Things change. I realised early on that had I not gotten the prime Thursday night ten o'clock time slot on ER, if they put us on Friday night, then I wouldn't have a film career.

"That's luck, not my own genius."

Up in the Air (15) is on nationwide release.