clooney, with extra

His six-foot lanky frame spills over a dainty settee, yet he looks comfortably relaxed in media battle fatigues - faded denims and well -worn black leather Harley boots - while downing copious quantities of Evian. The silver flecked steel grey hair, remarkably smooth olive skin and soft brown eyes combine to produce the swoon effect.

The looks, however, would be nothing without the accompanying personality. Clooney gives mature takes on the business, infiltrates everything he says with a sharp, self-mocking irony and displays ready flashes of wit. If his run of luck ran out tomorrow he would cope perfectly well, thank you very much. And, yes, there is always the safe haven for talents on the way up or down, Murder She Wrote (the TV series which gave him an early break), to provide shelter and succour, he notes with jocularity.

Clooney, 37, has the peace of mind and considered views that accompany someone who has had to struggle for his slice of the action. There are no detectable signs of lurking arrogance or a tendency to take it all for granted. He may be surrounded by hype and glory, but, curiously, he appears entirely detached from the brouhaha.

The latest wave of interest has been stirred by his suave performance as an escaped convict in a romantic thriller, Out of Sight, in which he has a sparky liaison with Jennifer Lopez as a detective on his trail. In one of the sexiest scenes in the annals of cinema, the two are confined back to back for the first 10 minutes in the boot of a car, being driven down a bumpy road. The pairing positively smoulders in the way it used to between Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn in those screwball comedies of the fifties.

''Jennifer is smart, funny, and sexy, but you never know if the chemistry will work until you see it on the screen. It is like catching lightning in a bottle. It was a tricky scene to shoot. Originally we did it in one take, but you needed to cut away and then come back to them. So we had to go back and reshoot. I wasn't complaining,'' says Clooney, flashing that crinkled grin. Neither was Lopez.

With his newfound clout, Clooney was instrumental in ensuring that Lopez landed the part, despite the fact the studio tried to persuade director Steven Soderbergh to enlist a bigger name. ''We auditioned more than 20 actresses, but Jennifer was just so right. She was on her honeymoon when we held the original tests, so when she arrived back she came over to my house on a Sunday, and Steven brought over his video camera. She proved tough enough to believe she could pick up a gun and shoot you

. . . and was still sexy - often a tricky combination to get right,'' says Clooney.

With a script by Scott Frank, based on an Elmore Leonard novel, Clooney has high hopes it will achieve the same popular and critical success of Get Shorty and Jackie Brown, although in the States it suffered from being released in the same week as Lethal Weapon III and Armageddon. So far, a sure-fire winner has eluded him in the cinema, although he began receiving the phone calls in earnest in 1995 after the campy vampire movie for Quentin Tarantino, From Dusk Till Dawn. Subsequently, however, The Peacemaker, an action adventure with Nicole Kidman, and One Fine Day opposite Michelle Pfeiffer failed to ignite on all cylinders, while his winged avenger in Batman and Robin, the fourth in the franchise, was regarded as distinctly lacklustre.

Clooney's self-deprecating side kicks into play. ''With hindsight it's easy to look back at Batman and go 'Woah, that was really shit, and I was really bad in it'. The truth is, my phone rang and the head of Warner Bros said 'Come into my office, you are going to play Batman in a Batman film', and I said 'Yeah'. And I called up all my friends and they screamed, and I screamed, and we couldn't believe it. I am sure people screamed when they landed Ishtar [Dustin Hoffman's infamous flop].

''Batman was still the biggest break I ever had, and it changed my career, as weak a film as it was, and as weak as I was in it. On the law of averages there are going to be some clunkers along the way. I have to take some of the blame. What you do is learn, move on - that is a normal kind of human response. In this case, it helped me to start focusing on projects that I was interested in doing rather than looking for career breaks.'' He sheds no tears that director Joel Schumacher has decided to trade him in for a younger model for outing number five.

Clooney has become adept at quickly turning the page, rather than basking in introspection and soul-searching. Before ER took off he had survived eight failed TV shows, having been in the business for 14 years. Although he has relinquished his regular commitment as Dr Doug Ross, he will return for guest appearances. ''ER was everything to me. I was always a working actor, but it opened doors. The truth is that 95% of people in this business and in my union make below the poverty level. It is not that smart a business to get into. I finish with the show in February next year. All the other actors have renegotiated their contracts and are getting paid more than me. So I don't feel at all guilty about hurting the show - and I'm very friendly with Noah (Wyle) and Eric (La Salle). We hang out and play basketball together.''

Leaping around on the court is one of the ways Clooney keeps sane. He bounces his frustrations into the net along with the ball. ''The trouble with this job is that you cannot have a bad day. And basketball is better than treading a Stairmaster for two hours. After exercise you find you can deal with the things that were getting on your nerves.''

One of his bugbears is fans who talk about him as if he is not there. ''They'll line up and yell at me. I say 'How you doing?' and then they yell some more. I ask their name. And they keep yelling. Or they talk in front of you and say things like 'He's much older close up' and 'Look at all the grey hair'. I keep saying 'How are you doing?' and I never get an answer. That's when basketball helps,'' he says. He doesn't mind spending time with his fans, regarding it ''as part of the job. It's easy to do, and only takes about 15 minutes longer than not doing it. And in any case how do you walk past a six-year-old with a pen and a piece of paper and say, 'Get the hell out of my face, kid!'?''.

Work is important to Clooney, perhaps more than he is prepared to admit. ''It is probably the same for women but for guys it remains a big driving force. My father was always working when I was growing up, but I don't hate him for that. It was part of our life - the man went to work. It becomes part of your personal happiness and part of your identity. One of my shortcomings is that I am not necessarily good at not working,'' he says.

It is one of the main differences between him and girlfriend Celeine Balitran, 24, a law student who works part-time as a kindergarten teacher. They met first during a break from filming The Peacemaker in France; he managed to track her down to the Paris bar where she was working and where she had first served him coffee. She accompanies him where possible, and seems totally unfazed by the Clooney effect. When they were in Cannes one year she was glimpsed by a Hello! photographer dashing off from the luxurious confines of the Hotel du Cap to do their washing at a local laundrette. She appears as grounded as he is. For the moment starting a family is not on the agenda: ''You should only have children if you have a burning need. It's not something you should do half-heartedly.''

He recognises the conflicts. ''It's tougher on her because her identity somehow is always associated with me. She is a tough, smart woman with her own ideals and goals. But I don't have the time she has - she has more spare time, working mainly mornings. Whereas if I'm doing TV it's 14 hours a day, five days a week for nine months of the year. We see each other every evening, go out to dinner with friends, but we don't have vacations. If you are straightforward then people don't try to pry into the intimate moments of our life. It's not that interesting in any case. Most of the time I work. And work has kept me out of a lot of trouble.''

He possesses an easygoing attitude to the media. Focusing on celebrities, he suggests, has become a sign of the times in which there are fewer important causes to occupy airtime and column inches. ''I have never minded the attention, except the recent trend where young kids with video cameras follow you around and try to create news. I am a public figure, and if I walk out of a whorehouse with a hooker on my arm then I deserve what's coming to me. But if I am at the airport with my secretary and these kids jump in and ask 'Who's the chick?' then you feel you have to defend her and that gives them their story.''

He knows how to handle most eventualities. Part of his philosophy was honed at an early age, growing up with his older sister Ada in Kentucky. He witnessed the pitfalls at close quarters: his aunt, Rosemary Clooney, who was a significant singing star in 1950, suddenly found herself on the scrapheap in 1955 with the advent of rock. ''She was 24 and all washed-up. She had not become less of a singer, but she could not grasp it and turned into a nut for almost 20 years. She did every drug known to man, had a nervous breakdown, then finally got her act together. The real balance lies between success and failure. When everyone tells you you're a god, you take it with a grain of salt; equally when things are not going well and they say you suck, that is not true either. It is always somewhere in between . . . and you have to live through it all.''

He can also thank his father, Nick, for giving him an insight to how careers can fall apart. He was the host of a nightly news show which suddenly was axed, forcing the family on to the road as he looked for work. His mother was a former state beauty queen. The young Clooney attended as many as five different schools in eight years before he drifted into television in his teens - working as a gofer in his father's TV studio. He had to wait until the late 1980s before he began to attract useful attention - as Roseanne's chauvinist boss, which he played for one season.

It was at that time he began going out with Kelly Preston (who later left him for John Travolta), and then he married Taxi actress Talia Balsam. The relationship foundered with the couple splitting up amid considerable acrimony. Clooney admits he has had a colourful past but recognises that approaching 40 and a longstanding relationship brings new responsibilities. ''Going out with a bunch of girls when you're 18 is kind of cute . . . when you're 40 it's rather sad,'' he has said. His house, Rancho de Clooney in the Hollywood Hills, has seen its share of bachelor boy shenanigans.

Talk of being tagged sex symbol produces the by now obligatory put-down. ''I try to stay out of that. I've known people who have been through it, like Brad Pitt. Here is the problem: if you say 'Yes I am a sex symbol' you sound like a conceited idiot, and if you say 'No', then you sound as if you are being ungrateful for a compliment most people would appreciate. You can survive it. Just look at Paul Newman who managed to evolve.''

Michelle Pfeiffer, whose sister used to go out with him, has astutely defined his appeal: ''He's like watching Cary Grant. Men like him because he's a respectable and viable advocate for their position. And women obviously love him.''

Nevertheless, when he gets down to physical basics on camera Clooney appears as vulnerable as anyone. He points out that most actors try to say it's very technical and in no way sensual. However, he admits: ''Making out with Jennifer Lopez is still pretty great, let's face it.

''But is is also embarrassing. In a love scene every fault is up there on the screen. And the funniest aspect about being directed is that basically you are showing people how you would make out with somebody, and if the director doesn't agree then there's an argument. I just say: F**k you, this is how I do it.''

As a power player in the industry he finds he can command increasing power. He has been involved with television since he was a youngster. Now the guys he used to go drinking with as a greenhorn are heads of networks. If Clooney comes knocking with a project, the chances are he will receive support. He can greenlight a film - ast with Out of Sight, where he signed on and then went looking for a director with the studio, finally alighting upon Soderbergh, much to his glee.

Clooney has certainly become more selective in his middle years. It took him a year to find Letherheads, set against a background of American football in the 1920s but essentially a relationships comedy written by Scott Ryan, the same writer as Out of Sight and it will also be directed by Soderbergh.

Before then he pays his contractual dues to Warner Bros by embarking later this month on a dark comedy set during the Gulf War, Three Kings, in which he is partnered by Mark Whalberg and Ice Cube. Directed by David Russel, already it has caused a certain reaction among the studio chiefs who fear terrorist reprisals. ''They started to panic, tried to tamper with the script and tone it down, but we stuck in,'' says Clooney, who enjoys taking a leaf out of Clint Eastwood's book ''by gambling on yourself''.

''I had dinner one night with Jimmy Stewart a couple of years before he died. He was kind of depressed about getting old and not being able to work any more. He was talking to me about how he thought his career was something of a failure. And I am sitting there looking at Jimmy Stewart, thinking I am screwed. If he thinks his career isn't up to much, then I am dead,'' declares Clooney with a final flourish that signifies: Follow that if you dare.

l Out of Sight opens on November 27, The Thin Red Line launches on March 5. Richard Mowe interviewed George Clooney at the Deauville Festival of American Cinema