In Defense of George Clooney

Seriously, he's a great actor.

I know his career started as a dreamy doctor on "ER," but if you look at his movie career, there are some excellent, high-quality roles: "O Brother, Where Art Thou?", "Syriana," and the "Ocean" movies, which I actually think are great fun, done with a loving wink at the audience -- all three are an in-joke of some sort, but Soderbergh, Clooney, Pitt et al are willing to include everyone -- and a wonderful mix of the highbrow and the low.

And then there's "Michael Clayton," in which I thought he was superb. The whole movie was written so well -- yes, Clooney had nothing to do with the screenplay -- but his acting was right on the whole time. The only two other Oscar-nominated movies I saw last year were "Ratatouille" and "Lars and the Real Girl," (both of which were also excellent; and yes, I don't get to the movies much these days), so maybe Daniel Day-Lewis deserved to win, but Clooney would've been equally deserving to be on stage.

OK, OK, I just think he's a big hunk!

Update: As if I needed further justification, the New Yorker had a good profile of my favorite hunk in a recent issue, the kind of profile that seems to be written with a "validating a mainstream but excellent actor" intent. It reminded me a bit of Truman Capote's famous 1957 profile of Marlon Brando in the same pages, though Clooney is no Brando and Clooney's profiler, Ian Parker, is no Capote. Both, with Clooney parked on his couch in L.A. and Brando hiding in his Tokyo hotel room, yoga books on the table, had the theme of staying sane amid the fame.