Intro for September 3, 2026

Dear Gossips,

Last night at the Venice Film Festival opening night gala, George Clooney received the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement. As mentioned earlier this week, Venice is a special place for him, and he said emphatically during his speech that it’s his favourite festival – he spends a lot of time in Italy with his family, he was married there, and so many of his films have premiered there.

So yesterday was a whole day of George in Venice and we could do three posts about what was said and what he did but here are my key takeaways, starting with what he said at the press conference about why he’s not directing as much anymore and acting more instead.

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Please don’t misunderstand, I’m not giving him flowers for being a parent and prioritising the needs of his children as determinants for his career choices. What I’m observing is that we don’t hear this a lot from famous men in his position – the refrain is most commonly delivered by women, celebrity mothers talk often about what projects they can and can’t take because of their kids, it’s not typical to hear this from a male movie star. But if there was a movie star lawyer, George Clooney is married to her. And so his work certainly doesn’t take precedent over hers.

Amal was with George at the gala, in a custom Tom Ford dress by Haider Ackermann. They arrived early and she waited for him in the wings while he worked the entire carpet from barricade to barricade, greeting fans – one of the few mega stars to do this… and it’s not the first time. Every time I’ve covered a George Clooney carpet he’s early, and he doesn’t rush the experience for both the media and the public. I will always love this about him.

Laura Dern was the one who introduced George and presented the award during the ceremony. During her remarks, she included commentary from many of George’s collaborators – actors and directors who’ve worked with him over the years. High praise, as expected, but Alexander Payne and Noah Baumbach, who directed George in The Descendants and Jay Kelly respectively, stood out to me the most. Per The Hollywood Reporter, Alexander said that:

“What makes George Clooney such a great actor, director and citizen are his humanity and compassion. Not only that, but for us movie buffs, meeting George is the closest you will ever get to meeting Clark Gable or Cary Grant and what that must have been like. He’s just one of those guys. But when you meet him, he makes you feel like the most important person in the room. He remembers everything, tells jokes, pours great wine, treats everybody the same, makes everybody laugh, shares brutal gossip.”

George Clooney IS a gossip, one of the best! He has so much tea – I’ve seen him spilling it at parties with other celebrities, and we’ve heard him spilling it in interviews too. One of my favourite clips to revisit, and I do it any chance I get, is from back in 2014 when he and Julia Roberts were doing the Vanity Fair Hollywood issue cover and he made a quip about Gwyneth Paltrow, when GP allegedly declared war on Graydon Carter and VF over the supposed hit-piece they were working on about her.

This man has multiple group chats talking sh-t about his peers, there is no doubt.

On a more serious note, here’s Noah Baumbach on why George is so revered in the community:

“George is a great movie star because he’s a great actor. He’s used the fact that people attach their dreams to him to dream a better world for others. He’s wildly generous to people he knows and equally generous to people he’s never met. And he’s a total goofball.”

“He’s used the fact that people attach their dreams to him to dream a better world for others” – it’s a great way to describe celebrity in its most idealised form: a vessel for people’s imagination and hopes. Do I personally think he embodies this 100% of the time? Of course not. Do I think that he performs his celebrity with that intended purpose? Absolutely. The impact is not always achieved, but the intention is there.

And George expressed this in his speech during the ceremony during the second part of the quote below, when he used his time to remind of the audience of the power of storytelling as a reflection of the human condition.

“The first people that authoritarians tried to shut down are not politicians. They’re journalists who ask questions. They’re the artists who refuse simple answers. They’re the filmmakers, writers, actors and musicians who insist that someone you have never met is deserving of your empathy. Stories are always dangerous to people who peddle in fear. The people who are afraid of books and music and stories, they’re never the heroes in history. So yes, movies don’t stop wars. They don’t lower inflation. They don’t fix elections, but they do do something remarkable. They remind us that a stranger is never a stranger and that he might just be the hero in somebody else’s story. And if we can still sit together in the dark and care about people that we have never met, I think maybe we’ll be OK.”

That’s it, that’s why we share stories, that’s why it’s important to tell them and receive them. So that we can see a stranger for more than just a random. This is where empathy begins. And where there is empathy, there can be connection and then care.

You can watch a video of the entire George Clooney presentation from Venice here.

Yours in gossip,

Lainey