'I don't think I'll ever win'
2006-02-14 11:32
Los Angeles - Hollywood playboy George Clooney does not expect to win any of the three Oscars for which he is nominated this year, but he said on Monday that he is thrilled to be invited to "the big dance".
Clooney, 44, also reflected on his slow two-decade rise from television sitcom actor to Academy Award-nominated screen heartthrob, saying the battle had made him better able to cope with his fame.
"I was in Berlin and somebody said 'Are you going to win?'," said Clooney at a luncheon in Beverly Hills for this year's crop of Oscar nominees.
"What do you say? 'Yeah, I'm going to win'? If you were going to Vegas and you got 20% odds would you take that? No," said the star, who is nominated for best director and best original screenplay for his political drama Good Night, and Good Luck, and for best supporting actor in Syriana.
"The truth is, realistically, it doesn't feel like I'm going to win. I don't think I'm ever going to win," he said, adding however that he was glad to be invited to "the big dance" and proud of Good Night's six Oscar nominations.
Looking back on his career
The actor looked back on his chequered career that involved making 15 pilots for television series that were never commissioned by the networks and a string of B-grade roles in other shows, concluding that he was better for the experience.
"I started out doing some bad things, but had I been immediately successful at anything, things would have gone entirely differently - I would have been injecting crack straight into my forehead by now," he joked.
The awe-inspiring gathering of Hollywood's most famous and most powerful made Clooney muse on his long career in Tinseltown that took him from a role on the 1980s sitcom The Facts of Life to his first three Oscar nominations, all in the same year.
"It's really awesome. Who would have thought that after doing The Facts of Life that this would have worked out like this? If you've survived a mullet, you can survive anything," he joked.