Martin Schoeller

He is in the backseat of a dark SUV -- coffee in hand, dressed in black, hair sharply parted -- and is, for the first time in his life, reading his own Wikipedia entry.

George Timothy Clooney (born May 6, 1961) is an American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter who gained fame as one of the lead doctors in the long-running television drama ER (1994-99).

He pauses. "Yes, that's true."

He attended St. Susanna school . . . There he developed an interest in theater.

"Sort of . . ."

He was an average student.

"Actually, I pulled out my report cards," says Clooney. "I was a much better student than I thought I was. I had all A's and a B. So that's not so bad."

Clooney injured himself on Syriana's set, during a torture scene, in 2004. He had some excruciating headaches and suffered short-term memory loss.

"And," he adds, looking at me, "I suffered short-term memory loss."

You may Google yourself from time to time, but George Clooney doesn't. How could he? It's different for him. It's overwhelming. Its infinite madness could disintegrate a man's personality. "George Clooney" pops up on nearly 11 million sites on the Internet. Spend a day browsing these sites and you will find unfathomable rage and baffling adoration. You will find America with all its insane colors refracted through the prism of George Clooney.

But George Clooney is also a brave man, and today he has agreed to spend a couple of hours exploring what the Internet has to say about George Clooney. A sort of This Is Your Virtual Life. Today he will see things that shock him, scare him, and make him shake with laughter. He will see things so disturbing that he will walk out of the room horrified. Also, he will see his own nipples.

But for now, a little after 9:00 a.m., as we zip down the FDR Drive to the loft where the Esquire photo crew is waiting, he's reading aloud his comparatively friendly user-generated biography:

He secretly financed and executive-produced a political thriller short film called The Endgame Study in 2006.

"Never heard of that. It was so secret, I have no idea what they're talking about."

It is rumored that Clooney was the one to have circulated the videotape of Jesus vs. Santa (the video greeting card that gave birth to South Park) around the Los Angeles area in 1995.

"There's truth to that."

Michelle Pfeiffer and Nicole Kidman each bet him $10,000 that he would be a father before he turned forty.

"When I turn forty, I'll let you know about that."

Clooney stirred up controversy for his remarks about Charlton Heston, saying Charlton Heston "announced again today that he is suffering from Alzheimer's."

"I wrote him a letter saying I usually avoid making jokes at people's expense, so I'm sending you an apology, and I got a really nice letter back from his wife."

His entry finishes with the Heston flap. "Huh. Nice way to end," says Clooney with a humpf. But overall, he has to admit, a pretty favorable assessment of his life -- if not entirely accurate. "The hardest thing is trying not to correct everything on the Internet. It'd be night and day -- wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. So you just have to say, All right, I'll take it, bring it on."

The SUV pulls up to the photo studio. Or what is supposed to be a photo studio. It's an unmarked brown door on a deserted street in Brooklyn. "Where the hell are we?" asks Clooney. "This is a hit, isn't it?"

Part I: clooney+career

There is no one inside packing heat, just a photo crew, along with coffee and cookies. Clooney and I withdraw to a bare, industrial, wireless-equipped room in the back. We sit in low-slung chairs at a long table, facing a MacBook.

I figure it's still too early to alarm Clooney with the sordid details of his bedroom habits. Stick to the career for now. I click to the Internet Movie Database and scroll to his first credit: a part in a 1978 miniseries about the history of Colorado. Andy Griffith played a professor. Clooney distinguished himself as the Village Extra.

"They don't even have my first gig," he says. He made his real debut in a horse-racing flick called And They're Off. "I didn't even want to be an actor," he says. "I was just hanging out with my cousin." The movie was shot in Clooney's home state of Kentucky and starred his cousin Miguel Ferrer. "I rented my car, a Monte Carlo, to them and got fifty bucks a day. They gave me a part as an extra. And Miguel said, Come to L.A. and be an actor. I had just spent the summer cutting tobacco, which is a miserable job. So that's what made me move to Hollywood."

This one looks interesting: a 1993 thriller called The Harvest. Clooney is listed as the "lip-syncing transvestite." Yeah, he remembers that one. Wishes he didn't. He went to visit some buddies on the set in Mexico, and the director asked him to be in the background, wearing a gold lamé dress and mouthing the words to a song. "It wasn't really supposed to be credited, and suddenly this idiot director put our names on it. It was like, Thanks, pal. It didn't matter when nobody knew who you are, but now it's come back to haunt me."

I take him to YouTube, which has dozens of copyright-infringing clips of his work. There's a brilliant ad for Italian vermouth directed by Robert Rodriguez. And there's the nonlinear love scene from Out of Sight -- Clooney in white boxers, Jennifer Lopez in the sexiest grandma underwear in history.

A YouTube commentator has written:

I precisely found it pretty awful. . . . =(

"That's funny," Clooney says. "Because that's usually thought of as a pretty great love scene. Steven Soderbergh really shot the shit out of that movie. That one holds up. I try to get a couple that hold up over the years. O Brother holds up. Three Kings [about the first Iraq war] will hold up. Three Kings actually seems like it's newsworthy."

He pauses.

"And The Peacemaker, of course. Someday, a group of people will discover that one and give me a posthumous award for that."

I tell him that, without a doubt, somewhere on the Internet, we can find a fan club for his 1997 belly flop about Russian nukes. "There's no such thing," he insists.

After a couple of minutes, I concede the point. The closest I can find are a handful of positive reviews of the Peacemaker DVD on Amazon. I also find this review, which Clooney reads aloud:

George Clooney is about as entertaining to watch as Michael Jackson being raped by the Gorton's fisherman.

"Wow, that's an angry cat right there," says Clooney.

One could argue that some would find that immensely entertaining -- but I agree that I think it is meant as an insult.

"If you want to see angry, look up Batman & Robin," Clooney says.

He's right. The most popular review on Amazon:

I finally understand this movie. It's the kind of thing that Ed Wood would have directed if someone had handed him umpty-million dollars and not applied any adult supervision.

Clooney unleashes a big laugh. "That's hilarious."

Because of his various battles with the tabloids, I'd always considered Clooney to be prickly about criticism. But I'm not sure that's accurate. In some ways, he's the most self-aware of celebrities, and he knows that getting trashed is part of the game. He saw his aunt Rosemary go from superstar to has-been to psychiatric patient to respected elder. He saw his dad's career wax and wane. He understands fame.

"You ever hear of the Hollywood Stock Exchange?" I ask. "They set up a stock exchange where people trade celebrities."

"Really? I must be waaaay down. It's been a bad year."

Clooney's definition of a bad year, apparently, includes an Oscar nomination for Michael Clayton and a $311 million gross for Ocean's Thirteen. Not to mention the upcoming release of Leatherheads, the first movie he's directed since his Oscar winner, Good Night, and Good Luck, in 2005.

Clooney's stock is trading at $46, down from a career high in 2000, the year of The Perfect Storm and O Brother, Where Art Thou?

"What's Damon at?" Clooney asks. "He should be way up. Forbes did something recently where they said he's the most bankable star."

Martin Schoeller

I type in Matt Damon. "Damon's at $83. Damon Wayans is at $1.54."

"That hurts," he says. "That's unfair to Damon Wayans."

We play a guessing game to see who's highest: Hanks clocks in at $139. Cruise is $116. Depp -- $115. Will Smith wins at $168.

"It's not necessarily just payday and numbers," he says, perhaps relieved. "Because if it was just numbers, Johnny Depp would kill everybody."

Part II: clooney+handsome

The fact that George Clooney is handsome is an a priori truth. Triangles have three sides, and Clooney is handsome. Yet the terrible thing about the Internet is that even a priori truths are called into question.

We are logged on to a Facebook group called "George Clooney is NOT the sexiest man alive."

"Ninety-four members," says Clooney as he looks at the photo of himself with a red X through it. "What the fuck?"

He reads the site's manifesto aloud:

I for one am sick and tired of George Clooney thinking hes the sexiest man alive, like jesus hes so old! It's just not right. That man is so full of himself it isn't funny. Join this group if you totally agree with me.

"Should I defend myself in this one?"

Clooney dictates and I type:

That's bullshit. He looks great for a 70-year-old.

Clooney likes to make jokes about how he's an alterkocker. It helps, of course, when the visible ravages of age are confined to a few gray hairs. It's also easier when you've had your eyes done. Or at least that's what a bunch of celebrity sites claim. Clooney reads aloud from one:

In a bold and unprecedented move for a celebrity, George Clooney openly admitted to having cosmetic surgery.

"I love this one," he says. "This was everywhere. Oprah did a show where Julia Roberts and I interviewed each other. And Julia said, 'Would you ever consider plastic surgery?' And I said, 'I got my eyes done, what do you think?' "

Clooney opens his eyes wide, like Betty Boop.

"I was in Italy when it aired, and all of a sudden it was all over the Italian papers. Once it switches languages and loses all sense of irony, and it's bouncing back and forth.... They used to say you can't make a joke in print, but you can get away with it on film. But now you can't get away with it there."

He pauses.

"I did get my balls done, though. I got them unwrinkled. It's the new thing in Hollywood -- ball ironing."

Clooney has also been accused of having hair plugs. That libel came after his role in Syriana, for which -- to appear more schlubby -- he shaved back the hair on his temples. In fact, he claims he's got the opposite problem, an advancing hairline: He's got a widow's peak that he shaves. "Right here," he says. "Feel."

I've never felt another man's widow's-peak stubble. But Clooney makes the invitation with such ease and confidence, it seems impolite to turn him down.

"Nice, isn't it?"

I decide to raise the stakes: CelebHeights.com.

It features a bizarrely impassioned debate about Clooney's height -- with participants arguing for everything from five nine to six one and analyses of his footwear and comparisons to Javier Bardem's stature.

Deadman15 writes:

The thing i did notice is he doesnt have the best posture (as stated here many times before), and he does do the head tilt thing alot.

"Yes, I slouch," Clooney says. "My mother tells me that."

So what's the truth? According to the man himself, he's five eleven and a half.

"I saw Donald Trump on Larry King, and he was saying [here Clooney goes into a Trump impression], 'Clooney is a very short guy. I mean, he's a tiny guy.... I don't want to knock the guy, but he's very small.' I met Donald Trump once, and I was sitting at a table. He came over, shook my hand, and walked away. I guess I looked about three foot five sitting at the table."

Part III: clooney+sex

Clooney's publicist is sitting on a long couch across the room. He's been tapping out text messages, trying to put out a fire. Seems an impostor has been claiming that Clooney's coming to the Ford Models party tonight. He's not. But as far as hoaxes go, this is a believable one.

I decide Clooney is ready to see a bit about his swinging single life. We start with an article in a South African newspaper titled I WAS CLOONEY'S VIRGIN LOVE. Clooney reads it out loud:

Sexy George Clooney gathered a trembling 18-year-old virgin in his arms, laid her down on his bed, and made such gently passionate, non-penetrative love to her that -- 10 years later -- she still shudders when she recalls the terrific orgasm.

Actress Claudia Wells . . . told Britain's News of the World: "I know a lot of women will think I was crazy not to have had full sex with him, but I've never regretted it. Even without full intercourse the sex was terrific.

He stops. "I know who Claudia Wells is. I can't imagine she said this."

So is he denying he gave her a shudder-inducing orgasm?

"I don't think that one is true. But it was twenty years ago, so maybe I did."

I tell Clooney that I wish I was in a position not to know whether I gave someone a terrific orgasm.

"Yeah, I know. But twenty years ago -- I'm having trouble remembering the penetrative love I had."

(For the record, Wells says, "I've been trying to get them to take that down for years," but otherwise declines to comment.)

I click onto a site that features Clooney having penetrative love, but this one is admittedly imaginary. It's a fan-fiction site -- a place for Clooney admirers to write steamy short stories. This story concerns Clooney's ER character, Doug Ross, Julianna Margulies's nurse, a hot tub, and words like gripped, caressed, and moan.

Her gentle sucking of his nipples became more frantic. . . .

Their tongues darted ferociously, as if in a contest of whose could get further inside the other's mouth.

"You know what?" says Clooney. "I think this was actually taken out of Bill O'Reilly's novel."

O'Reilly -- who has feuded with Clooney over Clooney's charitable work -- wrote a 2004 thriller called Those Who Trespass. "Do yourself a favor one time -- read his novel," says Clooney. "It's fantastic. It's like, 'He cupped her small, supple breasts.'"

(The actual O'Reilly text: "Ashley felt two large hands wrap themselves around her breasts and hot breath on the back of her neck.... Tommy O'Malley was naked and at attention.")

Back to real girlfriends. I bring up a site that has a list of Clooney's alleged exes, all with accompanying sultry photos.

You've got a lot, I tell him.

"Well, I'm old. I've been around a long time."

Clooney fact-checks the site:

Vendela -- "No."

Celine Balitran -- "Yes."

Salma Hayek -- "No."

Brooke Langton -- "Yes."

Traylor Howard -- "Yes."

Lucy Liu -- "No."

Julia Roberts -- "No."

Renee Zellweger -- "A little bit."

Jenifer Siebel -- "For a minute."

Hillary Rowland -- "Don't know who that is."

Teri Hatcher -- "No."

Ellen Barkin -- "Never, but I love her. She's a great friend."

I show him an article in a Canadian paper in which a psychic predicts 2008 is the year in which Clooney will wed. He's been dating former Fear Factor contestant Sarah Larson for five months -- enough to inspire jealous sniping on Clooney fan sites.

"I think that wedding one is a bit ahead of its time," Clooney says.

Well, last year, I say, this psychic predicted the death of Steve Irwin.

He's unimpressed. "It's really hard to predict the death of the Crocodile Hunter. 'I predict the death of the guy who stands under an elephant.'"

But is there perhaps another reason he won't commit? I show him a site called "George Clooney is GAY GAY GAY." Clooney starts to read:

George Clooney's life parallels Rock Hudson's way too much to be a coincidence. He was married once to some unknown actress --

He breaks off: "No, Talia is not unknown. She's actually very successful...."

He keeps reading:

He dates beautiful women and nothing happens and they disappear into oblivion.

"That's because I eat them."

So . . . any truth to this?

"No. I'm gay, gay. The third gay -- that was pushing it."

Martin Schoeller

Part IV: clooney+politics

We have just finished a discussion of how gay he is when someone asks Clooney where he's going after his New York stay.

"I'm actually going to Darfur."

Clooney, who cofounded the charity Not on Our Watch, has been named a messenger of peace by the UN, and he's off on a fifteen-day trip to Africa and Asia. It's his second stealth trip to Darfur but his first to Khartoum, the highly unstable capital of Sudan. Is he nervous?

"I'm nervous because [the UN] is nervous," he says. "I'm going with a woman from the UN, former U.S. Army. She's a badass. But this is one of those times where you say, I have a really nice house in Italy, do I really want to..." He trails off.

I show Clooney a site that has eight different T-shirts urging him to run for office. Clooney 2008. Obama/Clooney. Sexiest Prez Alive. There's also a Facebook group with 357 members imploring him to run for Senate in Kentucky. Could that be the next step?

He says no, which will be a relief to the folks at celebpolitics.com, a Website that keeps a watchful eye on liberal actors. I show Clooney that he has a conservative-friendly rating of -14. He's a "wacko liberal nutcase." (Though Alec Baldwin beats him with a -21 rating.)

The site highlights a 2003 quote from Clooney:

The problem is, we elected a manager and we need a leader. Let's face it: Bush is just dim.

"That was 2003?" he says now. "Gee, gosh, I was wrong about that. Bush turned out to be really great at all this."

They also rate your movies, I tell him.

"Oh, good. I can tell you which one they'll like the best: O Brother, Where Art Thou? That's my bet. Because when I'm around conservative cats, they'll go [in a southern accent], 'I do like that O Brother, Where Art Thou? movie.'"

Nope, that one's Toxic Liberal Waste. As are almost all of his other movies.

We click on whitehouse.gov. We're in luck. President Bush will be answering submitted questions later in the day.

"Here's one I've been wanting to ask the last few weeks."

I type it in for him:

Where's Dick Cheney?

"There's a couple of options," Clooney surmises. "They're keeping him out because he's the only person with a lower approval rating than Bush. Or he's out hunting lawyers."

(Bush did not answer the question, opting instead for this one from Gioia: "Who picks your attire for all the important events you attend? Love your ties." Responding, "Dear Gioia, I pick my own suits and my own ties. Thank you for the compliment about the ties, and thank you for your question.")

Part V: clooney+fights

For such an easygoing guy, Clooney always seems to be facing off with someone, at least in Crazyland. Even his friendships are seen as hot rivalries. I show him a site that says he is having something called a "bromance" with Brad Pitt:

They're both very famous and both have been voted sexiest man alive, so really they belong together.

"Well, you know, if I was a girl and he was a girl, and I was a lesbian and he was a lesbian, I'd be all over him," says Clooney.

So I show him something a little tougher. Apparently his most recent battle has been with Fabio, with whom he argued at a restaurant. Something about Fabio's fans taking photos and Clooney not wanting to be in the background of the pictures.

Fabio has just been quoted about it in GQ. Clooney reads about it with a Schwarzeneggerian accent:

He is a dog whose noise is worse than his bite.

"Did he really say that? He couldn't have said that."

He ate more than he could chew.

"It's like a Saturday Night Live sketch. Nobody says things like that."

I could have beaten the bleep out of him.

"Yeah, that's probably true. He's a big guy. I wouldn't doubt that. There is a moment when you're actually in the argument and you're thinking, If I do get beaten down by Fabio, that will be far worse than the pain. I wouldn't shake that."

That seems to remind Clooney of something else. "Someone just came after me," he says. "Some actor went off on a fucking rant on me, like a drunken rampage. I wish I could remember who, because it'd be a fun one to see."

After a few minutes, we figure out the actor in question is British actor Rupert Everett. I call up the page and we start to read:

Clooney thinks that, provided he does films which are politically committed, he's allowed to do Ocean's 11, 12, and 13. But the Ocean's movies are a cancer to world culture. They're destroying us, Everett told The Independent.

"You go, Where did that come from?" he says. "You kind of go, Dude, weren't you in Dunston Checks In?"

Part VI: monkey+butt

Clooney's been pretty comfortable with all this so far. He's not easily thrown by his own fame or by the brutal assessments of the fame obsessed. But what about the larger dangers of the Web? I realize that I've spent a couple of hours showing Clooney sites about Clooney, but I haven't asked him, Does he ever go on the Internet?

"I go on YouTube when somebody says to look something up," he answers. "There was one a few years ago that killed me. Look up 'monkey smells butt.'"

I type it in. Up pops a video of a chimp sticking his finger up his butt, smelling it, then promptly passing out.

Clooney roars with laughter. "He just smells it and goes woooah and flops off the side. That always kills me."

At this point, I make a segue that seemed relevant at the time but in retrospect was probably a very bad idea. "You know," I tell him, "I asked the guy who does the Esquire Website what I should show George Clooney, and he said, 'Show him 2 Girls 1 Cup.' "

"What's that?"

"It's the most disturbing video in the history of videos."

"Show it to me."

"Really? I don't know."

"I can take it," Clooney says. "I'm a grown-up. We're all grown-ups."

"It's scarring. It'll scar you forever."

"Is it long?" he asks.

"No," I tell him, "but it's so disturbing. I saw it once and can never get it out of my mind. I can't watch it again."

"I want to see it."

Well, he asked. After a bit of searching, I find the link. I click it.

After several seconds: "It's not so bad," he says.

Three seconds later: "Oh."

Another two seconds: "Oh, my GOD! Oh, my God!! Oh, my God!"

Clooney puts his hand over his mouth like he's going to throw up. He bolts from his chair and walks out of the room.

Clooney's longtime PR guy, Stan Rosenfield, wants to know what the fuss is about. Clooney tells him he just watched the most repulsive video he's ever seen. Rosenfield wants to see it.

"I want to go at least one second more than George."

"I've got to watch Stan watch it," Clooney says, recomposing himself. "It's like the rodeo -- see how long you can last."

Rosenfield lasts three full seconds before walking out.

Clooney, having regarded himself all morning, now just watches, doubled over with laughter.

Author's note: Please do not watch this video. I don't want any more page views on my conscience. But do feel free to watch the monkey one. That's kind of funny.

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