Photograph by Jennifer Cooper

George Clooney
Bob Barnes, Syriana
Age: 44
Birthplace: Lexington, Kentucky
Essential filmography: From Dusk Till Dawn (1996), Out of Sight (1998), Three Kings (1999), O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), Ocean’s Eleven (2001), Solaris (2002), Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002), Good Night, and Good Luck (2005)

PREMIERE: What was your first acting job?
The first pay job was a TV series called Street Hawk. It was like Knight Rider on a motorcycle. I was the evil nemesis, and you can imagine in 1984 the kind of hair you would have. It was evil man hair.

Any discoveries playing this part?
It is an exposure of a real bunch of policy problems, especially our ties to Saudi Arabia. That’s Bob’s biggest fight—Saudi Arabia is the number-one sponsor of terrorism in the world, and it’s also our closest ally.

What was the toughest scene to play? Why?
The torture scene is where I got hurt, so that was the toughest. Being taped to the desk, which was my idea, gave me no real protection when the desk went over. I finished the scene, got on a plane, and went right into the hospital.

If you weren’t acting, you would be . . .?
I probably would’ve ended up being a proctologist or one of those jobs that you never started out wanting to do. You failed a lot of brain surgery classes and then you ended up saying, “Okay, I’m a proctologist now!”