\n<\/p>\n
George Clooney has said that his decision to base himself in France was informed by the desire to give his children a better start in life than if they had remained in the US.<\/p>\n
The actor, 64, who has eight-year-old twins, Ella and Alexander, with his wife, the human rights lawyer Amal Clooney, gave a lengthy interview to US Esquire magazine while staying at his Italian villa on Lake Como.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe live on a farm in France,\u201d he said. \u201cA good portion of my life growing up was on a farm, and as a kid I hated the whole idea of it. But now, for [the twins], it\u2019s like \u2013 they\u2019re not on their iPads, you know? They have dinner with grownups and have to take their dishes in.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey have a much better life. I was worried about raising our kids in LA, in the culture of Hollywood. I felt like they were never going to get a fair shake at life. France \u2013 they kind of don\u2019t give a shit about fame. I don\u2019t want them to be walking around worried about paparazzi. I don\u2019t want them being compared to somebody else\u2019s famous kids.\u201d<\/p>\n
Clooney\u2019s father, Nick, now 91, was a local TV anchor in Cincinnati and the actor reflected that the age gap between himself and his own children means that similar comparisons will be harder to draw.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe only thing I feel lucky about is that I\u2019m so much older that the idea that my son would be compared to me is pretty unlikely, because by the time he actually will have done anything, I\u2019m gonna be gumming my bread.\u201d<\/p>\n
He also spoke about his desire to ensure his children were self-sufficient, through encouraging them to help out in the grounds and witness his handyman skills fixing, variously, a fan belt (using a pair of his wife\u2019s stockings), a coffee machine and the automated cover for the swimming pool. \u201cIt\u2019s important to me that they can survive,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Clooney said that his experience on Broadway earlier this year in a stage version of 2005 film Good Night, and Good Luck, was made considerably more stressful by his age.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs you get older, it doesn\u2019t matter how many granola bars you eat; your brain starts to lock up,\u201d he said. \u201cI had all these long monologues, and I was afraid of blowing my lines. So every single night for 100 performances, I would do the whole play in the dressing room before I went onstage. I was so terrified.\u201d<\/p>\n
Clooney is currently promoting Jay Kelly, Noah Baumbach\u2019s film in which he stars as a Clooney-esque film star reassessing his life ahead of a lifetime achievement tribute. Making the movie, said Clooney, also caused him to look back at the highs and lows of his own career, and the impact it had had on his own health and family.<\/p>\n
He told Esquire that although never addicted to alcohol, he had \u201cruns where I\u2019d get pretty toasty every night\u201d as well as having dabbled in cocaine during the early 1980s.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the time, it was like, \u2018No, this is not like heroin. It\u2019s not addictive.\u2019 But then it was like, \u2018Oh, well, it\u2019s actually pretty fucking bad.\u2019 Plus, it was all cut with mannitol. The baby laxative. Everybody would do a line and then take a shit.\u201d<\/p>\n
Watching film classics from the same period with his wife had also caused him to reassess that time, he said, recalling a viewing of Animal House, which he billed as a film with \u201cno equal\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe said: \u2018Well, let\u2019s watch it.\u2019 I go, \u2018I don\u2019t know if it\u2019s going to hold up.\u2019 Like, the first scene,<\/em> a 13-year-old girl passes out and the devil pops up on the guy\u2019s shoulder and says, \u2018Fuck her brains out!\u2019 And my wife\u2019s looking at me like, \u2018Are you kidding me?\u2019 And I\u2019m like, \u2018Oh my God, this is terrible<\/em>!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" George Clooney has said that his decision to base himself in France was informed by the desire to give his children a better start in life than if they had remained in the US. The actor, 64, who has eight-year-old twins, Ella and Alexander, with his wife, the human rights lawyer Amal Clooney, gave a<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26477,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[166,11005,2918,1072,337,8969],"class_list":{"0":"post-26476","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-children","9":"tag-clooney","10":"tag-france","11":"tag-george","12":"tag-life","13":"tag-raised"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26476"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26476\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/26477"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}