--- title: 10 Questions for George Clooney | TIME description: Director and actor George Clooney talks about his new movie, ‘Ides of March,’ Obama, politics, Darfur and Berlusconi’s bed. canonical: https://time.com/video/EVtin8uI/ og:title: 10 Questions for George Clooney og:description: Director and actor George Clooney talks about his new movie, ‘Ides of March,’ Obama, politics, Darfur and Berlusconi’s bed. og:url: https://time.com/video/EVtin8uI/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/EVtin8uI/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: 10 Questions for George Clooney twitter:description: Director and actor George Clooney talks about his new movie, ‘Ides of March,’ Obama, politics, Darfur and Berlusconi’s bed. twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/EVtin8uI/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # 10 Questions for George Clooney > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: 10 Questions for George Clooney [Watch (HLS stream): 10 Questions for George Clooney](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/EVtin8uI.m3u8) (6:56)  _Published 2011-10-13. Director and actor George Clooney talks about his new movie, ‘Ides of March,’ Obama, politics, Darfur and Berlusconi’s bed._ --- Jul 27, 2023 3:18 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [The Lavish Life of George and Amal Clooney](/video/TDBXbirt/) ### The Lavish Life of George and Amal Clooney [George Clooney on a Night with Berlusconi](/video/bV7xbc0p/) ### George Clooney on a Night with Berlusconi [George Clooney's Quest](/video/1la34ZdN/) ### George Clooney's Quest --- ## Transcript [ INAUDIBLE ] Get an education and then we are going to create a national unity. We're gonna teach young people a trade, and we're going to get them out of debt for their college loans. Now, where does that fail? Oh, that's exactly right, Governor. It's just, if you're going to do it, do it. The problem I'm having with Clooney is that everybody in your life, who you haven't heard from in a long time is like ," Hey, you think you, I could meet George Clooney ?" [ LAUGH ] And here's George Clooney. Welcome. [ SOUND ] Hi, guys. Hello. So the poster right, fantastic. Yeah, it's okay. Half of it's good. [ LAUGH ] So it's a terrific movie and, having been in politics myself. You get the politics all right I think. Do you really want this story getting out? [ MUSIC ] Dignity. Matters. Integrity matters. [ NOISE ] Our future depends on it. George plays this guys running for President who's very left wing. Yeah. Right. I mean is there any sense that, that like there's somebody who could actually succeed. You could picture a scenario where this could work. Yeah. It couldn't work right now. Yeah. It couldn't work in the, now as, as the, the left is the center and the right is further right. I'd be pretty hard to run as a guy who's. You know, as progressive as this guy is. But, you know, on the other hand this is a Democratic primary. Right. And everybody sort of. Right. Moves further to the left and you know, we say a lot of the things that really is red meat for, for liberals. So. You know, and, and we do it specifically because we're going to make this guy you know, make mistakes along the way. Yeah. But, I mean in our culture now, there, do people make a separation? Like you allowed this personal moral failing, but that doesn't really influence who you are as a, as a, as a. As a politician. I dunno, it depends on how you handle it. I mean honestly, I really do think in general political moral failing almost always, almost always come down to, not just the huberis, not just the, the stupid act itself. Yeah. But the covering up of that stupid act. I truly believe that if Nixon had taken the tapes and burned them on his front lawn and said, these belong to me, you know, screw you, I think Watergate would have been a very different case. If you come out right away and go, welp, you got me, I think you have a better shot at it than if you try to hide it. I won't even make all the references to that that exist, John Edwards, etc, etc. We, we wrote it before John Edwards the scandal broke. That's why. Not, not before John Edwards was, you know, [ SOUND ] [ LAUGH ] But before the But before the scandal actually broke, we we'd already written it and and we were actually in preproduction and then Obama was elected. And it was a funny thing cuz it is a pretty cynical film. [ LAUGH ] And everybody was in such a good mood. I was sitting with Grant Hesloff who has been my, my partner in, in films for, you know, almost 30 years now. And he and I were sitting there, we were feeling pretty good, the script's in good shape, the cast is coming together. And we realized that everyone is in such a good mood that we couldn't possibly make this movie now. And then it took about a year. [ LAUGH ] Badge of the country, very good for film making. So let's talk president Obama. Are you one of those progressives who is disappointed with how he's been in office? I get sort of angry actually at people who don't stand around and stand for him. Republicans are very good, at rallying around and standing with their candidate. If this was a republican president they would be bragging, not on the issues, because they're not gonna be bragging on don't ask don't tell and things like that, but they would say" We were losing 400, 000 jobs a month, we stopped it. We saved the car industry, we. You know, you could go down the list. We passed a health care bill. Is it perfect? No but neither was social security when it start. I could give you a list of things that he's done that, that if you were gonna sell it you would selling this as a very successful presidency. Particularly as polarized as it is. Right. Right now. And do you chastized your liberal progressive friends by saying hey you got to support this guy. There's just two ways of doing this. You know, it's half empty or half full. Yeah. And we, Democrats tend to generally eat their own, you know. Exactly. [ CROSSTALK ] They'll pull one thing out and go, you didn't support us enough on this issue. So you didn't do it. And I find that to be silly. Now you have a house in Italy, right? I do, yes. So you spend a lot of time there. And when we look at American politics, I look at Italy and think. Hey [ LAUGH ] it's not so bad. Anything we, we can learn from Italy, I mean. What are the lessons [ LAUGH ] or the contra lessons that we can learn? I don't know. I mean there's no I, I, I've had one evening with Berlesconi that was one of the more astonishing evenings in my life. [ LAUGH ] Oh didn't he ci, he cited you in his defense? Yeah, he wanted me to be in his defense. Yeah! And I, and I spoke to their people and said, I'll, I will come and testify if you'd like. Because I wasn't at the party that the, I was said to have been at and that's what they were using me as the defense, saying that I wasn't at his bunga- bunga party. [ LAUGH ] But I was at another party. I went there to speak to speak about Darfour. And you know, I'd done all my homework. I'd shown up and said, you have 33 C1- 47 helicopters, you have eleven of them in Afghanistan. You need eleven others down. That leaves eleven, we have we need three. We've got South Korean pilots that can do it. We just need three helicopters in Darfur. [ COUGH ] And there was, you know, and it was an. Amazing conversation of, you need to grab [ INAUDIBLE ] his bedroom. And the bed that Putan had given him, [ LAUGH ] there's so many jokes and so little time. [ LAUGH ]. Ronald Reagan. Sure. [ INAUDIBLE ] Said, when he asked, how eh, can an actor be president? [ CROSSTALK ] How can the President not be an actor? [ LAUGH ] So, how good an actor, how good an actor is Obama? If you consider a good actor to be the guy that you wanna do when you're doing the live TV drama, or when you got one take left and the sun is setting, then he's a very good actor. Because with his back against the wall, he's always terrific, always every time. Would you run? No, I run from, [ LAUGH ]. [ LAUGH ] I mean honestly think about it, I don't have to compromise like that you know. I get to say oh I think that what's going on in North, South is bad. And I don't have to worry that the Chinese would be upset if I say, or the Russians are upset. I can just say this is something we have to deal with, and I don't have to compromise so much. I like my, my job's much much more fun. [ NOISE ] You OK? I am going to be fine. We have to do it. It's the right thing to do and nothing bad happens when you're doing the right thing. Is this your personal theory because I can shoot holes in it. Well, there's exceptions to every rule. [ NOISE ] [ MUSIC ] [ SOUND ] Who is this? Kadafi. You gotta couple a minutes? I'd like to sit down with you. I'll keep ya talking. 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