George Clooney did a Reddit Ask Me Anything. Everyone is doing those AMAs these days. I give credit to Benedict Cumberbatch! No, I know Cumby wasn’t the first, but he was one of the best AMAs over the past year. But Clooney is here to take everybody down. Clooney will charm your pants off. You can read Clooney’s AMA here, I’ll just do some highlights (he gave long answers to a lot of questions, he must have been sitting on there for a really long time).

Shading Daniel Day Lewis: “I’m a cobbler, I like to make shoes. Let me just tell you this. When Daniel Day-Lewis was spending all his time playing Lincoln, I was just fixing shoes. He’s spending all the time focused on the hat, and the pipe, and getting into character, and I remained focused – with the overalls and the hammer.”

Working on From Dusk Til Dawn: “Quentin directed an episode of ER and Rob and he were working on this project at the time and Quentin came over and said ‘You wanna come in and meet on this project?’ Yeah, are you kidding? I’d get to work with Juliette Lewis and Harvey Keitel and Rob and Salma and Quentin. I was playing a pediatrician on a hospital show and all of a sudden I get to murder people? I thought that was pretty great. I got to spend 8 weeks or so in the Titty Twister, what was the downside?”

Why do you have such lonely eyes? “I actually have only one lonely eye. The other eye’s got nothin’ but friends.”

The best prank played on George: “It was Brad, we were shooting Oceans 12 in my hometown in Lake Cuomo and he had a flyer sent around saying George only wants to be called by his character’s name Danny Ocean, don’t look him in the eyes, and it got into the local paper. As you know, jokes don’t translate at all, and they called me il divo, and said that I was treating the crew like shit. When it got into the paper I came downstairs and Brad had the paper in his hand, and I said “You’re mine from here on out.” Brad just said, “Please don’t harm my children.” Yeah, he’s done some pretty rotten things.”

Reading list: “I’ve been spending the last year trying to get through the Cat in the Hat series. But, I’m still not there – I’m a slow reader. You know I do read but I don’t read as much as I’d like to. And why read when there’s such good television? I have been going back to some classics lately. You know, for a period of time in your career you tend to read books just to see if you want to adapt them or make them into a film then all of a sudden you realize you’re just reading that. I’m reading some classics I haven’t read in 30 years, I’ve got an original copy of To Kill A Mockingbird, a signed original copy, and I pulled that out 2 months ago. You tend to forget how great the great writers are.”

Beating Leonardo at basketball: “It’s true. That was a fun day. It’s always fun when you play people younger than you and win. We’re playing a bunch of six year olds tomorrow.”

Amy Poehler & Tina Fey need to watch out: “You know I got really good by Tina and Amy the other day and I’m working on getting them back in a big way. But for the most part most of the time when it’s bad it’s actually funny. You actually feel bad for the comedians up on stage cause you know if you’ve ever gone to a comedy club and you see somebody bomb it makes you cringe. Shows like that are designed to have fun with you without being devastatingly unkind. I’ve been the target of a couple of stupid jokes that didn’t work, but in general I’ve only seen a couple that were really vicious toward people, and they didn’t work. When they don’t work you feel badly for the person doing it.”

His favorite actor to work with: “Let me think about this in the best possible way that doesn’t get me murdered by all other actors I’ve worked with. I don’t know…I’ve done 6 films with Damon now, so I guess I do enjoy working with him, though you wouldn’t know it. I’ve been really lucky to work with people who enjoy what they do. I’ve worked with a couple of turkeys, but I’ve mostly been really lucky.”

Sandra Bullock is a drunk: “It’s tricky cause Sandy drinks so much that oftentimes it’s just hard to keep her upright. No, you know, Sandy and I have known each other for over 20 years and we both were struggling actors when we first met. She was dating a friend of mine at the time who’s still a good friend of ours. Every time we’re together it’s funny. She’s somebody I adore, really, she’s just fun to be in a room with. I’m sure people will assume people aren’t quite who they appear to be on screen—they’re shorter or taller or meaner or dumber—but Sandy is exactly what she appears on screen, an incredibly charming woman who’s really just fun to hang out with. Very smart and centered, even though she does drink a lot.”

Career embarrassments: “Well I wasn’t thrilled with the nipples on the batsuit. You know that’s not something you really think about when you’re putting it on. You figure all batsuits have nipples and then you realize yours was really the first. Batman was just constantly cold I guess. But I have plenty of other things that I’m really obviously embarrassed about too. Oftentimes it’ll be stumbling out of a bar drunk or something dumb like that but as you get older a major goal in life is try to do less and less embarrassing things. You know, try not to face plant publicly as often as possible.”

Advice for young filmmakers: “First of all, have a point of view and have a story to tell, and go shoot it. In the last 10 years things have changed. You can shoot your own film at a cost you can afford, get it up and get it seen. Don’t wait for the establishment to tell you you can do it, just go to work. It used to be that you couldn’t get a job until you were in the Screen Actors Guild, which you couldn’t do if you weren’t in the union, and its not like that anymore. That’s how we have artists like Justin Bieber. The world is better for it now.”

[From Reddit]

What else is there to say? The man’s a charmer, a wit, a bon vivant, a scoundrel and prankster. You will never really get one over on Clooney, will you? And seriously, if the worst thing we can say about him is that he only dates 30-year-old budget models, waitresses and Vegas party girls, that’s probably not the worst thing. Also: everyone loves Matty D! EVERYONE.

Photos courtesy of WENN.