How do you celebrate when you receive a Lifetime Achievement Award for your work in front of the camera? Well, if you’re George Clooney, get behind the camera yourself.
The actor, 65, was honored with the prestigious Golden Lion last night as the Venice Film Festival kicked off.
But he traded his film prize for a film camera and borrowed a photographer’s lens to take his own photos instead.
Tiziana Fabi, a photographer with news agency Agence France-Presse, posed for Clooney while holding the actor’s trophy.
Clooney accepted the award and said it was an “incredible honor” before joking, “Do [the award committee] Do you know something I don’t know?’
In a politicized speech, the star said we are experiencing “a moment in time when the people in charge… are telling us to be afraid of each other.”
He continued: “The first people authoritarians try to shut down are not politicians. They are journalists who ask questions.
George Clooney was honored with the prestigious Golden Lion at the opening of the Venice Film Festival last night, but he traded his prize for a film camera and borrowed a photographer’s lens to take his own pictures instead.
Clooney appeared on the red carpet with his wife Amal for the premiere of Danny Boyle’s film Ink
Tiziana Fabi, a photographer with news agency Agence France-Presse, posed for Clooney while holding the actor’s trophy
‘It is the artists who refuse simple answers. They’re the filmmakers, writers, actors and musicians who insist that someone you’ve never met deserves your empathy. Stories are always dangerous for people who fall for fear.’
Back on the other side of the lens, Clooney also appeared on the red carpet with his wife Amal for the premiere of Danny Boyle’s film Ink. The actor dressed in a Giorgio Armani tuxedo, while 48-year-old Amal wore an elegant black Tom Ford dress.
Based on the 2017 play by James Graham, Ink follows Rupert Murdoch’s takeover of The Sun in 1969.
It stars Guy Pearce as Murdoch, Jack O’Connell as newspaper editor Larry Lamb and Claire Foy as a fictional director
Ms Foy said she found the world “really intoxicating”, adding: “They had power at their fingertips. They knew what they wrote would be… what people believed.”
