At 52 I found the love of my life and I’m really happy, says George Clooney

Voted as one of the most ‘beautiful’ men in the world on several occasions, George Clooney knows that his stint in front of the camera comes with an expiry date. In a freewheeling chat, Clooney talks about enjoying direction, finding love with wife Amal and his role in his latest release Money Monster, where he plays a TV show’s financial guru held hostage by an aggrieved viewer.

What do you think about the theme of Money Monster We loved the idea of talking about the world of money and how it’s gotten out of control, about how when things do go wrong you actually don’t understand what is happening, causing you to lose a lot of money. And how, when things like these happen, it’s always the little guy who kind of gets screwed. I thought those were really interesting themes.

Did you think the subject was relatable to the common man Well, I think mostly people understand the real simple themes; that somebody out there is probably benefiting off of my lack of understanding. And I think that in general, that is a very easy thing for an audience to understand. They go, yeah, that happened to me, or yeah, I didn’t understand that either, or I put my money in this or I did this and I got screwed. We as a society understand being scammed. So it made that part of the story sort of simple. In fact, part of it was in making sure that we didn’t get too into the weeds in trying to explain the simple bits and instead dealt much more with the characters and what they’re going through.

How is working with Jodie Foster Most actors who become directors focus on performance, in general. That is a very good thing if you’re an actor in a movie by such a director, because the very first thing that you realise is that you’ll be protected in terms of performance. So from the minute Jodie asked if I wanted to play the part, I thought I will be perfectly safe working with Jodie because she’ll take care of the actors.

You’re one of the most iconic actors in Hollywood. How do you handle fame and success Fame has an interesting element to it, but if you tend to be followed around by a camera then you can feel suffocated at times.

Do you ever feel that you are limited to the scope of work because of your age I think nobody really wants us to see anybody’s real age; it’s a very unforgiving thing, the camera. Ageing becomes something that you try to show less and less on screen. You try to pick the films that work best for you, and as you age their frequency too reduces.

Tell us about how different directing is from acting for you Directing is my great love; I do enjoy it a lot. I’ve had great success and I’ve had some not-so successful films. But what I’ll say is it’s really been fun. As you age on screen, you get to that point where you really understand that you can’t stay in front of the camera your whole life, and so it’s much more fun and it’s infinitely more creative to be directing — infinitely more.

How’s married life Has it changed you at all I’ve never been happier in a relationship by any stretch of the imagination. At 52 I found the love of my life and I’m really happy.