Unlike most stars who originally found fame through their charm and good looks, George Clooney contemplates his graying hair and onset of middle-age with ease.

“I’m old,” the 48-year-old actor said with a laugh. “It’s an interesting thing to watch yourself grow older on screen.

“I was watching Up In The Air and I thought, ‘Jesus, who’s the old gray-haired guy?’ And it was me. I never wear makeup for movies and now it’s starting to show.” Clooney, who is often referred to as the 21st Century’s Cary Grant, mused: “It’s funny, because most male actors work with actresses who are considerably younger. But earlier in my career I was working with a lot of actresses who were my age or older so people always thought I was older anyway; and now I’m going through this thing with people thinking I’m about 60.

“But I’m kind of comfortable with getting older because it’s better than the other option, which is being dead. So I’ll take getting older.” George Clooney was his usual dry, genial self as he chatted in a suite at London’s Dorchester Hotel. He is in town for the London Film Festival opening night premiere of the animated film The Fantastic Mr. Fox, director Wes Anderson’s first venture into animation, for which Clooney supplies the voice of the title character. He also stars in two other films which are being screened at the festival, the romantic comedy-drama Up In The Air and the black comedy The Men Who Stare At Goats.
George Clooney was facing journalists on day two of the London film festival ahead of the UK premiere of his film The Men Who Stare at Goats, based on Jon Ronson’s book of the same name.

He said he was sympathetic to journalists. “I’m the son of a newsman, I grew up around news,” he said. “I can understand newspapers are losing subscribers. It’s a tricky thing, you have to sell papers, I get it.

“The problem is that there is so little reporting any more, somebody will write a story and it will be in 100’s different outlets and you have no recourse. It will be false and you’ll go ‘it’s not true’ and they’ll go ‘we’re not saying that, we’re saying a London tabloid has said it’. So they’re just reprinting and reprinting things that aren’t necessarily true.

“It used to be two reliable sources and that doesn’t seem to exist any more. I understand the problem, I understand why it happens but it certainly is an issue.”
Clooney’s co-star, Kevin Spacey, was less sympathetic. He said: “I don’t get it. I don’t understand the notion of people who might call themselves journalists who would just make up stuff. I don’t understand it as a function of a human being. I don’t understand why that’s of interest, to write something that is false. If you even bother to say ‘that story has no wit of truth to it’ they write that you denied that that story is true, which is not the same thing as saying what we wrote was absolutely wrong.

“There are some people who choose to fight these things in the courts and there are those who say ‘you know what, it’s yesterday’s news, it’s fish wrapping and I’m not going to worry about it’.”

Clooney and Spacey spoke after yesterday’s Guardian reported on a soon-to-be released film called Starsuckers in which the documentary makers fed false celebrity stories to newspapers and the majority found their way into print unchecked.