vanity fair - november 2006

George Clooney (and Gemma Ward) grace the cover of November's Vanity Fair - and here's the thing - is he the new George Hamilton? I mean, there is no one sexier - but he's really starting to look like an old leather handbag. That aside, I know that everyone loves George Clooney. I enjoyed reading the Vanity Fair article so I thought that I would post a little snippet - as well as the great photos with Gemma.

His new movie, directed by Steven Soderbergh and co-starring Cate Blanchett is The Good German. “I will tell you right now – she will win the Oscar,” Clooney says. “She’s the best actor working today. Not actress, she’s an actor. Intimidating, in a way, to work with an actor that good.” Shot in black and white, it’s an homage to the wartime noirs, in which the American hero gets lost in the muck of old Europe.

“Everybody’s right and everybody’s wrong,” he told me. “Everybody’s a little dirty along the way.” It’s a kind of smoothie, with ingredients consisting of equal parts Chinatown, The Third Man and Casablanca. It’s as if Clooney took a machine back through time to make a movie with Billy Wilder.

It has been argued that Clooney is the last of the old-time movie stars, a throwback to Jimmy Stewart or Gregory Peck, or the master himself, Cary Grant, the only American actor who radiates a calming sense of adulthood, the only grownup in the room. It’s this persona – the decent man in a cockeyed world gone wrong – that he carries from role to role and that makes you cheer him the way the studio audience used to cheer every time Fonzie came on the set. Maybe he’s a doctor, maybe he’s a convict, but Clooney is always Clooney the way Gable was always Gable.

I must say that I love that George Clooney gives credit where credit is due. I have long thought that Cate Blanchett is one of the greatest living talents today. Whether or not she will win the Academy Award this year - who knows. It will certainly be a year of stiff competition - what, with Helen Mirren in The Queen, and Annette Bening in Running with Scissors! I was so glad to see Cate finally win for her turn as Katharine Hepburn in The Aviator - but I still maintain that she was completely robbed in 1998, when Gwyneth won for Shakespeare in Love. Cate should have won, hands down, for Elizabeth!

Meanwhile, how gorgeous is Gemma as Grace Kelly!?! For those of you who might not have recognized the look of this shoot - it was clearly styled along the lines of To Catch A Thief, the great Hitchcock thriller - which starred Cary Grant and Grace Kelly.