George Clooney Interview When He Was On “Facts of Life” (Merv 1985)

By Billy Ingram

‘Marvelous Merv’ interviews a very young George Clooney at the beginning of what would be a long and illustrious career.

Although Clooney comes from Hollywood royalty, his aunt was the legendary crooner Rosemary Clooney and his father was a local TV celebrity, he was raised in the small town of Augusta, Georgia near the Kentucky border. Coming from a high school with a graduating class of 23 students, “You knew everybody,” Clooney says.

In September 1985, NBC moved the seventh season of ‘Facts of Life’ to Saturday nights at 8:30 as a lead-in for the brand new series The Golden Girls. In an attempt to increase ratings, George Clooney was added to the regular cast after a season on the medical drama E/R. Of his co-stars Clooney commented, “The girls are so terrific. They're really ... You'd think six years, they're all going to be at each other's throats, but they’re great. They hang out and go bowling at night.”

George Clooney stayed with his aunt Rosemary in Beverly Hills on Roxbury Drive when he was getting started. “Yeah, I'm coming from Kentucky and it's got the pool and the tennis courts and I'm like, ‘This is great!’”

He also had to learn the hard way that there are a LOT of wannabes in show business. “[In Kentucky] if someone came up to you and said, ‘Hi, I'm a producer,’ you would go, ‘Oh, great! When can we work?’ And out here [in LA] they could be anybody, and they could be anything. It took me forever to figure out that it could be very phony out here. That everybody says they're a producer, and they're not. And just when I was getting used to that, just when I was getting that down, when I had somebody say, ‘You're a producer,’ and I go, ‘Riiiight.’”

Clooney talks about being discovered in a very Hollywood way, “I was on the beach, playing volleyball with some friends of mine, and I hit the ball over and I went over to pick the ball up with this guy laying on the beach, and he goes, ‘Hi, I'm the head of casting for ABC.’ And I went, ‘Yeah, get out here.’ And he was!”

Watch the entire interview:

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