Cool as clooney

Hes the kind of actor who could float along forever on charm. But he doesnt

There8217;s no mystery about why George Clooney is a movie star. Guys who are extremely handsome,move well,can project intelligence and humour,appear to enjoy the company of women and possess soft,deep masculine voices have historically done pretty nicely for themselves on the silver screen.

Clooney often seems like a throwback to the leading men of earlier eras: a passing resemblance to Cary Grant; a hint of Paul Newmans 60s cool. Hes the kind of actor who could float along forever coast on charm. But he doesnt. Or doesnt always. Thats the mystery.

His performance in Jason Reitmans Up in the Air has put him in early contention for this years best actor Oscar,and a more effective showcase for his skills would be tough to imagine. Playing an Omaha business consultant named Ryan Bingham,who flies around the country firing people for a living,Clooney appears in every scene and exudes all-American confidence.

What makes Up in the Air an ideal vehicle for Clooney is that everything he has to do in the film is just the smallest shade of difference away from his familiar amiable persona. Movie-star performing is a peculiar,poorly understood subset of the art of acting: it relies on a certain constancy of personality,on the ability to seem at all times as if you were simply playing yourself.

Early in his film career,Clooney toyed with more conventional types: as a romantic comedian,in One Fine Day 1996; as a stolid man of action in the Peacemaker 1997; and even,God help him,as a comic-book superhero,in Batman amp; Robin 1997.

He finally found a role in which he looked entirely at ease with Steven Soderberghs tricky comic caper movie Out of Sight 1998. His performance is all sly looks and bone-dry readings,held together by a general air of barely contained exasperation. And although hes a thief and an escaped convict,he looks with undisguised admiration at the US marshal whos trying to bring him to justiceJennifer Lopez.

Clooney works the territory of 21st-century American normality,playingnow,at 48middle-aged men who are good at what they do but are beginning to feel stirrings of doubt and dread. Ryan Bingham is one of them. His slow-dawning suspicion that travelling light might not be all there is to life is a different order of dissatisfaction from the mortal panic felt by Bob Barnes,the C.I.A. field operative Clooney plays in the 2005 Syriana. He won a supporting actor Oscar for that performance.

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Being a movie star has its creative pitfalls,chief among them narcissism and laziness. If all you have to do is play your own wonderful self,you neednt expend much time or energy trying to bring a character to screen life. Movie stars dont have to work for the audiences attention; theyve got it as soon as they appear on screen,and once they have it,they can go about their proper business of exploring behaviour in its minutest,most unpredictable particulars. Thats what George Clooney does in Up in the Air.

Its what he did in his first best-actor-nominated performance in Michael Clayton 2007. There Clooney plays a depressed ex-cop who fixes messy situations for a giant New York law firm and never lets his ambivalence show,until the very end,when,after a compromised version of justice has been achieved through Claytons efforts,he allows himself to relax a little at last.

He flags a taxi,slumps into the back seat and tells the cabbie to drive. Its only then that you understand how eloquent Clooneys body language has been throughout the filmhow tensely hes been holding himself. As he sits in the cab,the camera stays on him for two full minutes. He does nothing,apparently. But you can feel the weight of what hes been through in his blankness,his emptied-out eyes. Its a great,daring piece of acting. Only a movie star could get away with it.