Additional Information on George Clooney

Additional Information on George Clooney

Overview


* George Clooney’s mother, Nina Bruce, was a former beauty-pageant queen and a city councilwoman; his father, Nick Clooney, was a broadcast journalist, a fill-in host for American Bandstand, and the full-time host of the game show The Money Maze; and his aunt was the famous singer/actress Rosemary Clooney.

* In December 2005, when Clooney was asked about Senator Hillary Clinton’s effort to distance herself from her past support for President George W. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq, the actor replied: “She’s pretty political so I’m not surprised. Am I disappointed? Yeah. I hate it when smart men and women are saying, ‘Well, if I knew then what I know now.’ The fact is: I knew it then and I don’t have national security clearance. I knew there was no tie between Saddam Hussein and 9/11. We all knew the U.N. inspectors wanted to keep looking for weapons of mass destruction. Basically, the Democrat leadership was scared [of criticizing Bush] and it’s too bad, because it’s come back to haunt them.”

In March 2006, Clooney again expressed his anger at Democrats for not taking a tougher stance against the Iraq War: “The fear of [being] criticized can be paralyzing. Just look at the way so many Democrats caved in the run up to the war. In 2003, a lot of us were saying, where is the link between Saddam and bin Laden? What does Iraq have to do with 9/11? We knew it was bullsh**. Which is why it drives me crazy to hear all these Democrats saying, ‘We were misled.’ It makes me want to shout, ‘F*** you, you weren’t misled. You were afraid of being called unpatriotic.’”

* In the mid-2000s, Clooney advocated the deployment of a “multi-national” peace-keeping force to end the tribal wars in the Darfur region of western Sudan. Along with fellow actors Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Don Cheadle, David Pressman, and Jerry Weintraub, Clooney co-founded Not on Our Watch, a humanitarian group seeking to “focus global attention and resources towards putting an end to mass atrocities” like those in Darfur and elsewhere. In a related effort, Clooney in 2010 co-founded the Satellite Sentinel Project, which uses satellite imagery to document such atrocities for all the world to see.

* While he has quietly contributed money to a number of political figures, Clooney for many years preferred not to publicly endorse any specific candidates — because, he said, celebrity endorsements can have a negative impact on campaigns. Thus in 2004 he declined a request asking him to campaign alongside Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry. He likewise turned down a request by his own father to campaign on behalf of the elder Clooney’s 2004 congressional run in Kentucky, though the actor did contribute money to the father’s efforts.

* Between 2003-14, Clooney made more than $130,000 in political contributions, all of which went to Democratic candidates and the Democratic National Committee. Among the more notable beneficiaries were Al FrankenBarbara BoxerDianne FeinsteinJohn Kerry, and Barack Obama.

* Clooney currently has a net worth of approximately $180 million.

* In the aftermath of a highly publicized 2014 hacking incident targeting Sony Pictures Entertainment, Clooney circulated — to Hollywood stars and executives at major film studios — an anti-cyber-terrorism petition that stated: “We hope these hackers are brought to justice but until they are, we will not stand in fear. We will stand together.” According to Clooney, “nobody wanted to be the first to sign on,” thus he collected no signatures. “This is just where we are right now, how scared this industry has been made,” the actor lamented.

* In the summer of 2014, when Israel was engaged in a military operation designed to destroy Hamas‘s massive terrorism infrastructure in Gaza, Clooney’s fiancee — the Lebanese-born human-rights attorney Amal Alamuddin — said: “I am horrified by the situation in the occupied Gaza Strip, particularly the civilian casualties that have been caused, and strongly believe that there should be an independent investigation and accountability for crimes that have been committed.” Alamuddin was offered a seat on a United Nations panel investigating possible war crimes committed by Israel, but said she was too busy to participate.

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