Hollywood star George Clooney received an honorary Golden Lion for lifetime achievement at the opening ceremony of the Venice Film Festival and used his time on stage to deliver an inspiring speech about the importance of stories and human empathy.
George Clooney honored at Venice Film Festival
Clooney attended the movie ceremony with his wife Amal Clooney and close friend Laura Dern, who presented him with the honor.
As Variety reports, Dern described Clooney as one of her oldest and closest friends and invited her other friends and collaborators to speak for the actor, including Brad Pitt, Adam Sandler, Steven Soderbergh, CAA partner and her longtime agent of 25 years, Brian Lourd, Alexander Payne, and Noah Baumbach.
George Clooney’s passionate speech
When it was Clooney’s time to speak, he cited the current political climate to emphasize the importance of stories. Clooney said he has learned a lot over the years by visiting places like Venice and experiencing world cinema.
“No one laughs in a different language. No one cries in a different language. Parents have the same concerns. Children have the same dreams. Love looks remarkably similar across languages, making it hard to believe that we are as different as we are constantly being told. We live in a time where the people in charge, the people with the most money, are telling us to fear each other. But we know better than that, don’t we? Because history tells us. Teaches a lesson.”
Clooney, 65, said the first people authoritarians try to shut down are not politicians, but journalists who ask questions and artists who refuse to give simple answers.
“They are the filmmakers, writers, actors and musicians who insist that someone you have never met deserves your sympathy. Stories are always dangerous for those who trade in fear. People who are afraid of books, music and stories have never been heroes in history.
“So yes, movies don’t stop wars. They don’t reduce inflation. They don’t decide elections, but they do do something remarkable. They remind us that a stranger is never a stranger and can be the hero in someone else’s story. And if we can still sit together in the dark and care about people we’ve never met, I think we’ll probably be okay.”
The actor also made fun of receiving the lifetime award in his speech. “You know, when they tell you you’re going to get a lifetime achievement award, two things really come to mind. The first is what an incredible honor it is. And then the second is, do they know something I don’t know?”
Clooney said he has been an actor for 45 years, and while looking back it all seems intentional, his career came to a head when he was trying to pay the rent.
“When you start to reflect over the years, you realize you didn’t really have a career so much as a series of happy accidents… Someone gave me my first job, someone else gave me my second job. A director saw something in me that I hadn’t yet seen. A writer wrote better lines than I expected. A crew member made me look like I knew what I was doing. A star like Laura was kind enough to let me learn from them. And over time, you get to know that “Starts to realize that no one gets anywhere on their own.”
George Clooney first attended the Venice Film Festival in 1998 for Steven Soderbergh’s Out of Sight. Over the years, actor-filmmaker Michael Clayton has brought his directorial projects such as the Coen brothers’ Burn After Reading, Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity, as well as Good Night and Good Luck to the festival.