George Clooney Biography

Clooney was born on May 6, 1961 and raised in the small Kentucky town of Augusta - a scant 40 miles north of Cincinnati, OH. George Clooney father, Nick - brother of famed singer and actress Rosemary Clooney - was a local talk show host-turned-popular news anchor. George Clooney mother, Nina, was a beauty queen. Clooney grew up on the set of his father's shows, occasionally serving as a commercial pitchman and sketch player, before later working as a floor manager. With dreams of becoming a professional baseball player, Clooney was invited to tryout for the Cincinnati Reds in 1977 when he was just 16. But his best proved not good enough, and he failed to make the team. Instead, Clooney enrolled at Northern Kentucky University, where he proceeded to party, chase girls and occasionally show up for class. Not that he was entirely irresponsible - Clooney worked odd jobs to put himself through school, selling women's shoes and men's suits. After dropping out of NKU, Clooney's cousin, actor Miguel Ferrer, came to Kentucky to make a low-budget movie about horseracing. Clooney was cast in a small part based on his good looks and became instantly seduced with the business.

In 1982, with money saved up from cutting tobacco, Clooney piled into his rusted 1976 Monte Carlo and drove to Los Angeles, CA in two days without stopping. George Clooney car guzzled oil and had ignition problems that forced him to keep it running on the side of the road while he caught an hour's worth of sleep. George Clooney  eventually sputtered into Beverly Hills, where he stayed with Rosemary, doing odd jobs around the house and driving his aunt and her famous friends around. Clooney then landed a job cleaning a theater - the money from which he used to pay for his first acting class. George Clooney first acting job was a Japanese commercial for Panasonic, followed by a part on the detective series "Riptide" (NBC, 1983-86). Clooney quickly made the jump from thankless television roles to forgettable horror flicks like "Grizzly II - The Predator" (1984), "Return to Horror High" (1986) and "Return of the Killer Tomatoes" 1988). But at least he was working.

Undeterred by the dearth of quality projects, Clooney continued plugging away on auditions, taking whatever job came his way (By the time he was a star, Clooney had worked on a total of 15 unsold pilots). Ironically, his first regular series role was as a young physician working in an emergency room in the short-lived sitcom "E/R" (CBS, 1984-85). George Clooney maintained a steady stream of bad recurring roles, playing a good-natured carpenter on "The Facts of Life" (NBC, 1979-1988) during the 1985-86 season; a womanizing factory manager on "Roseanne" (ABC, 1988-1997) for the 1988-89 season; and a construction worker on the short-lived sitcom "Baby Talk" (ABC, 1990-1992), which he left after clashing with the show's producer. After playing a detective on "Bodies of Evidence" (CBS, 1992-93), Clooney stayed with law enforcement, but switched to drama, starring as the married detective who falls for Teddy (Sela Ward) during the 1993-94 season of "Sisters" (NBC).