We caught up with the enigmatic George Clooney at the London’s Dorchester Hotel looking suave with his trademark greying hair. He is here to attend the London Film Festival where his latest film, The Fantastic Mr. fox, will premiere on the opening night. The Fantastic Mr. Fox is Wes Anderson’s first directorial animation venture in which George Clooney has lent his voice to the lead character.

Unlike other actors, he does not mind his grey locks on display or rather swears by it and carries it off with nonchalant panache. “I am old”, the 48-year-old actor retorts, grinning. He never dons makeup on screen and does not mind aging, and he is quite graceful at that. He muses, “It’s an interesting thing to watch yourself grow older on screen”. He is constantly regarded as Cary Grant of the 21st Century, which seems to amuse him no end. In reply to it he states that is quite funny because most of his male co actors have always worked with actresses who are quite younger compared to them. But early on in his career he worked with actresses who were his age or elder to him. So people assumed that he was older and now they consider him to be about 60 years old.

He has two other films in the pipeline, that are also being screened at the London Festival – one of them is a romantic comedy caper, Up In The Air and the other is a black comedy, The Men Who Stare At Goats.

Up In The Air is written and also directed by Jason Reitman in which Clooney plays a corporate expert travelling all over the country collecting flyer miles, living his life in hotels, rental cars and airports. But, as he gets closer to achieving his target of 10 million miles, he finds to his dismay, that his lifestyle is intimidated by an efficiency expert, much younger to him.

His black comedy, The Men Who Stare At Goats, is an adaptation of a book written by Jon Ronson, a British journalist which is supposedly a true story about a few U.S Military members who believed and attempted to use various supernatural mental stunts like turning invisible, killing goats merely by staring intently at them. This movie is co produced by Clooney along with his pal and partner, Grant Heslov, who has also directed it.

Both these movies seem really interesting and goes without saying, much awaited. He laughs modestly, “Boy. I have got a lot of films here this week….a lot of running around. And all three films are ones I don’t have to be embarrassed about—that’s rare”, he winks.

Currently, he is busy filming for his next film, The American, in Italy. He is again co producing it along with Heslov, and it is being directed by Anton Corbjin. Clooney says of Corbjin, “A lot of the times they don’t know how to tell a complete story, but he is very talented and I am very excited to be working with him and would like to continue working with him in the future…”, he trails off.

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