At a press-conference at the Dorchester I only got a few minutes chat with George Clooney, but it was worth it.....
DAILY MAIL
HEADLINE: Unshaven, slovenly and monosyllabic. So why DO so many women find this man irresistible?
BYLINE: JANE KELLY
TITLE: Daily Mail
DATE: 21/07/2000
He is the world's most eligible bachelor. Women swoon and need resuscitation at the very mention of his name.
If Robert Redford was once the universal cliché for male beauty, it has now changed to that of the rugged Kentuckian George Clooney.
So the question is this: What do women see in this unshaven character, yesterday creased into a crumpled grey sweater and wearing scuffed brown shoes?
Like all the other women at the international press conference to launch his new film, The Perfect Storm, I waited agog for the arrival of the most fetching male in the world.
Why was I so nervous? He's just a man, even if he does earn £10million a picture.
Nearly an hour late, he sloped into the room; grey goatee, dashing moustache and restless dark brown eyes, he looked like a Spanish grandee. He also managed to resemble a rather rebellious schoolboy.
At first he sat with his head down, looking shyly at his hands. Someone asked if it
was tough being so handsome. He made 'eeghah' cow-boyish noises. 'D'y want me to sound
like a jackass?' he replied, a self-deprecating good ol' boy, easily bashful.
Someone else asked how he coped with the physical strain of making a film in which
he plays an heroic New England fisherman, spending four months floating in
a tank of water for 12 hours every day.
'Gee, it was miserable,' he replied slowly. 'But I suppose I enjoyed spending time with the guys.' Apparently that is what he does most of the time.
It is known that at his home in the Hollywood Hills, where he keeps a motorbike, barbecue, baseball bat and pet pig, he regularly 'hangs out,' with his hard-drinking buddies.
And that is just what a lot of women like about him.
'He drinks vodka like a sailor and doesn't work out,' cooed an adoring woman journalist over from Spain to see him.
It appears he is a slob, or shall we say 'a man's man', who somehow remains very handsome, with a dangerous charm.
'Young boys today are wimps,' said another lady journalist, her faced flushed as she gazed at our man; "Clooney is like my father," she gushed. "This is about men having moustaches, big suits and hats and attitude.'
Clooney says his favourite actor is Spencer Tracy, that great patriarch and swatter of uppity women.
For Clooney, the ideal man, like Tracy, is both lover and Daddy in one. But this cosiness has a painful twist because he is also so unobtainable.
He is the Daddy who the little girl loves from afar. And of course, Clooney himself is clever enough to be unavailable, on screen and apparently in life.
Indeed, his romances have never worked out. His first marriage lasted only three years and he has publicly declared that he will never marry again or have children.
He does not want to be a Daddy to anyone.
Nicole Kidman once bet him £5,000 that he would be a father by the year 2001 but he is showing no signs. The question naturally came up about his settling down. In reply he made a sort of 'Pffff' sound, like an embarrassed little boy.
'Don't ask me about any of that stuff,' he replied, 'I'm just good with pigs.'
He
practically said 'shucks,' a little lad who just likes to play with other
boys.
His description of making the film dwelt on how his co- star Mark Wahlberg had spent a whole day throwing up after some 'bad sushi'.
Then he told us in great detail that he was feeling unwell himself with 'an insane chest cold'. He gave us his temperature and told us importantly that he was 'on antihistamines.'
We murmured sympathetically like a clucking coterie of concerned aunts.
Tough, good-humoured and babyish ? that is always a winning combination in a man.
As the press conference ended, normally respectable women rushed forward begging for photos taken beside him.
As I got my turn to speak to him, they handed me their cameras, upside down and back to front, desperate to get a snap of themselves entwined within his sloppy grey pullover.
Mr Clooney, as ever, was enigmatically unavailable.