George Clooney on using his passion for human rights for the role of Michael Clayton:

"Listen, I grew up in a family that was always involved in some way. My mother was a mayor, my father ran for Congress, so I've always been involved, politically and socially, in issues. Those always weigh on another part of my life. It didn't really inform much of what I was doing. I mean, Tony [Gilroy] won't really want to talk about things that he showed me before he started, but there are actual law documents, there were actual inter-office memos of companies that were literally saying from one department to the other, 'If you recall this it's going to cost $300 million dollars,' or 'If you don't, it'll kill three hundred people a year and the class action suit will cost $300,000 and you'll save this many people's lives.' Those were real documents that were passed around. And those documents, to me, informed how I would play the part, because you could justify it by saying you lay off 30,000 people and maybe three hundred die from that. So that's how you justify it. All little, keep the middle. That's a whole other side of my life that I think is important, but it didn't inform how I played this part."

Clooney on why he wanted to do Michael Clayton:

"You could take these characters in this story and you could put it into a medical drama or you could put it into a government drama. The truth is [that] it's about flawed individuals, one of whom comes to the realization that he's looking for redemption, which is always sort of interesting, and decisions that are made based on your own sort of self-interest and at what point, you know, you keep moving that line of morality forward. That's always interesting story-telling. You've done it for years, these kind of films and the reason we do them is because we do suspect corporate America, and with good reason. There's certainly been some, between R.J. Reynolds and a couple places, they've done some pretty shady things and required the whistle blower along the way. And wedo suspect sort of problems at times in law firms. All of those things are very real. So I think that's why it's resonated with me."

Clooney on what film makes him cry or makes him emotional:

"What film makes me cry a lot? The premiere of Batman and Robin. I cried. There was a couple moments in Peacemaker that made me cry, the beginning and the end."

On whether he had input into the film in terms of adding one-liners:

"No. I'd like to take credit for anything written, but literally, I believe I didn't veer from a single word. When a script's really well written, it's actually very easy. The hard part is when they're not written, you have to find ways to make it work. You have to make up things. You have fill in little bits or pieces. I tried to really say this one as written because I've had that experience a few times. I had it with Scott Frank on “Out of Sight”, I had it with Joel and Ethan [Coen] on O Brother, Where Art Thou? If it's a script that's really well-written, you're trying to serve the material.

On the scene in Michael Clayton impacted him the most:

"The love scene with Tilda [Swinton]. It was so, so good, really. During the rehearsals, she'd knock on my trailer, going, 'George, let's rehearse the love scene.' Listen, you love watching really good actors at their best. I love watching Tilda in a bathroom stall, sort of falling apart, which I saw yesterday, actually. No, there's something really beautiful about watching characters who are seemingly in control,really not in control and learning a lot about them. I love watching Tom [Wilkinson] in the scene in the alley, because he's so simple and so good. Those are the scenes that touch me. I'll tell you someone else people don't talk enough about, Sydney Pollack is areally good actor."

On whether Michael Clayton changed him and what he brought to the project:

"Well, we're the same height, pretty much the same hair. [laughs] I don't know? You're hoping you're growing every time, but probably not, unfortunately. All it really does is it gives you something completely different to play, which I haven't had achance to play before, and I really liked the idea of it. I don't know. You're trying to grow, but you never know if you are or not. You make an effort. The funniest thing is you can be good in films if you have a good script and a good director, but you can bereally bad in films, otherwise. It's not necessarily actors. I mean, you know the choices that actors make, I've seen actors improve on things, but ultimately, if you don't have a good script and you don't have a good director, there's nothing you can do, and that's thebottom line. So that's what it requires."

Clooney on taking a pay cut and whether it gave him more freedom:

"No, I didn't tweak anything. Tony wrote a great part. I've done, just in the last eight films, I've been paid for two. So it's not like you do the movies you do, the rest of them you do for as little as possible because you want to get the movies made. It's not likeyou're going to get rich off The Good German or Goodnight, and Good Luck or Syriana. You do them because you want to get the movies made. It's okay. I do all right. But no, it doesn't allow me any special leeway. Trust me, Tony may be a first-time director, but he's an adult and there was no need manipulating him. I promise you that. I tried. [laughs].

On protecting Michael Clayton as executive producer:

"I think it's important to point out, but sometimes it gets lost in the translation, executive producer of the film is not producing the film. Those two are producers of the film. They do the work. They get the money, they put the money together, they actually, day in and day out, produce the film, which is why if a film wins an Oscar, the producer gets an Oscar. An executive producer's job is to help knock your way through roadblocks. So all my job was to help with whatever their vision was, the filmmaker's vision was, to make sure that it gets realized in whatever way possible. That's not very difficult. They did that, not me."

George Clooney on making Michael Clayton with Tony Gilroy:

"He's also edited, like good filmmakers that I've worked with in the past, Soderbergh, the Coen brothers, it was edited in his head and on paper, in many ways, before we started. He had a lot of time to prep. So it wasn't this indulgent thing either. It wasn't a first time director who's collecting a bunch of footage and then getting into an editing room and saying, 'Okay, let's find the movie.' This is a movie that was so well-prepared. It was so well done from the very beginning. It was like working with an oldfriend."

On distinguishing George Clooney, the actor, from George Clooney, the celebrity:

"I'm celebrity obsessed. [laughs] In all fairness, it's not about now because if you think about, if you think about movie stars, they don't really exist anymore. They sort of stopped because of the television, really. But movie stars like Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy and Bogart, they basically played themselves in all those movies. We knew them as that. There was Lawrence Olivier who played a lot characters, but we didn't take to him as much as we took to Spencer Tracy or Clark Gable, Cary Grant or Gregory Peck, they played that same thing. So, in a way, we're able to break out from that a little bitmore. The unfortunate thing is I think you're demystified, because they know more about your life, because there are so many outlets. But in a way, you're sort of set free because there's always going to be an awful lot of celebrities out there sucking up the celebrity air that aren't really doing anything. There's a bunch of them that haven't done anything andare famous. You kind of go, 'Well, okay.' That creates a vacuum, in a way."

Clooney on whether a healthy competition exists between him and Brad Pitt:

"I don't like him, I'll tell you that. He's very short. I don't know if you've seen him in person. He's very tiny. [laughs] No, there's never any competition with my friends, ever. It's a weird thing, but you try not to compete in art, because it always seems sort of strange. I couldn't do the things he does - ever. So, no, no competition at all. I don’t have a competition going on with Matt Damon either. The interesting thing about awards seasons, which I've gone through now once, and when you finish it you get this feeling that the silt that you're talking about in the beginning of the movie -- you find yourself deciding, 'Well, I'm helping the film, and it's a good thing.' But at some point, you're actually campaigning for the idea that you should compare art, and I always think that that's a dangerous place to go, because I remember watching David Strathairn nominated for Murrow (in Good Luck and Good Night) and Philip Seymour Hoffman for Capote and people were arguing who had given a better performance. And you go, 'Well, havethem switch roles.' You can't compare art. And so there's never any competition.

George Clooney on his favorite Brad Pitt movie:

Johnny Suede. [laughs] No, let me think. In fairness, I'll tell you what, he's a really brave actor, which is an interesting thing. People don't often say that enough about him. You know, he does a performance, what he did in Snatch is just phenomenal. Phenomenal. He's a really brave actor. I'm working with him right now on the Coen Brother's movie. He's doing stuff in it that kills me, because he's going to steal the movie and I'm going to murder him. But you could go through a list of them. He's great in Fight Club. But Snatch was just a phenomenal performance. He should have been nominated."