Wry, clever and cool

A driven George Clooney tells Marianne Gray how important it is not to get typecast

George Clooney arrived on British screens more or less a fully formed star. He had spent years trapped in American sitcom hell and by the time we got him he was in his mid-thirties playing the debonair Dr Doug Ross in the hit series ER.

We never saw him as a young hopeful in embarrassments like The Return of the Killer Tomatoes or Murder, She Wrote, a TV show he describes as a junkyard for actors who become skeletons of themselves. He was delivered to us as Gorgeous George, the actor who could do no wrong.

‘Listen,’ Clooney comments amiably, when I meet him just before Christmas, ‘I was unfamous for a very long time and I’m enjoying being where I am now. I know that eventually my career will plummet — all careers do — so I’m going to savour this while it’s going strong.