CLOONEY AT 40
Is the world's sexiest man ready to settle down
 at last? Anne-Marie O'Neill doesn't think so.

Despite celebrating his 40th birthday in May, there's no question that notorious practical joker George Clooney still likes to have his fun. "He's not immature, but he hasn't quite grown up yet," says Walter Bernstein, who wrote the screenplay for Fail Safe, the classic Cold War thriller Clooney reproduced as a live TV drama last year. "There's still something unformed about him." Julianna Margulies, his former ER co-star, has noticed too. "George", she says "is a grown-up with a kid's heart."
And a kid's attention span, some might argue, when it comes to love. Since his theree-year marriage to his first (and only) wife, actress Talia Balsam, 42, ended in 1992, Clooney has never been desperate for a date, but his most serious romance, a three-year live-in relationship with French model Celine Balitran, 26, ended when she moved out in 1999, citing his lack of commitment. ("I wanted to have a real family with children," Balitran told the French magazine Oh La! "But... it will never be the right time for George.")

His latest girlfriend, 29-year-old English model and MTV Europe host Lisa Snowdon, spends most of her time in Europe. And even if she were more available, back-to-back movies - including 1999's Three Kings, last year's The Perfect Storm, O Brother Where Art Thou?, and now Ocean's 11 - have
kept Clooney stateside. Right now, says his close friend, actor and writer Mark Adler (Lynne here... it's Matt!), 34, "the longest, probably most well-nurtured relationship in George's life is Max" - the 150lb pot-bellied pig Clooney has parented since the mid-1980s.
Why can't Clooney commit? "The why is easy" says another friend, Perfect Storm director, Wolfgang Petersen. "If you really dig into it with him, it's his first marriage. I think it was an experience that kept him feeling like being single is just paradise." (Balsam, the daughter of actors Martin Balsam and Joyce Van Patten, has said Clooney "spent more time with his friends than me" during the marriage). Looking back, Clooney told Playboy last year, he had "felt sort of cornered" by marriage. By the end he'd put
on 25lbs and developed a stomach ulcer. "He has been extremely public about saying that he is never going to get married again" says Adler. "I don't think that he will. I think he really made an effort in his first marriage, and it really hurt him that it didn't work out. And he'll tell you, he
wasn't very good at being a husband."

Which is not to say that Clooney isn't a catch. Beyond the matinee-idol looks and fabled charm, "he's what we used to call a "ride back guy" says Three Kings producer Paul Junger Witt "the one in Westerns who would ride back and get you if you were shot off your horse."

Clooney is renowned for his generosity and for his loyalty to his gang of eight longtime friends whom he has known since his early days his Hollywood. An average Sunday at Casa de Clooney (as the actor calls his eight-bedroom house in the Hollywood Hills) begins with an early-morning ride on the Indian motorcycles Clooney bought "the boys" for Christmas in 1999. "His idea of a great day is playing basketball with his friends, having a barbecue, taking a steam and watching a basketball game that night" says Adler.

At work too, Clooney is a guy's guy. "We're just short of sitting in a room like in Jaws, showing off our scars" says Ocean's co-star Don Cheadle. "It really is a guy's movie, and he's right at home in a 24-hour town like Vegas. Over six weeks of shooting there, Clooney cruised the clubs (from the
Foundation Room at the top of Mandalay Bay hotel to the ritzy V Bar at the Venetian), chowed down at the upmarket steakhouse Prime and played golf nearly every morning before work.

Those priorities don't seem to bother Snowdon. "She's no prude. She has got an open mind" says an MTV colleague. The daughter of hairdresser Lydia Behar, 48 and insurance salesman Nigel Snawdon, 49, Snowdon adopted her more mellifluous surname when she began modelling as a teenager. She and Clooney met last October on the Barcelona set of an Italian TV commercial, where
Snowdon was playing a party hostess who answers the doorbell and is startled to find superstar Clooney on the steps. She had rehearsed the scene at least 20 times with a stand-in when the real Clooney - who wasn't due until the next day - arrived unannounced and sneaked into his place, causing Snowdon to abandon the script, before collapsing in giggles.

In the months that followed, the pair were seen out and about together in London and LA. On 21 January, Snowdon accompanied Clooney to the Golden Globes, where he won the award for best actor in a musical or comedy for O Brother Where Art Thou? When she was rushed to a hospital to have her appendix removed while visiting him on location in Vegas, Clooney took time off from the shoot to be with her. "We're having the best time" a presurgery Snowdon recently told Hello! "It's really cool. He is quite romantic and likes lots of candlelight, hot bubble baths and dinners out, quiet dinners in."

But this doesn't mean that father Nick Clooney can look forward to fishing with his grandchildren anytime soon. Just ask Michelle Pfeiffer and Nicole Kidman, who in 1996 bet Clooney $10,000 apiece that he would be a father by 40. "I don't have any interest in [having kids]" he told Vogue last June. "I just don't think that it's something you can do casually." It's not that Clooney doesn't like kids, explains his friend Adler "He's just not going to father someone he can't be a father to. He won't have a child and be gone seven months out of the year. He recognises tha value of being a parent."

Life is good, but even superstars are allowed a few anxieties when they're faced with turning 40. By all accounts Clooney approached this milestone with characteristic cool - but for one small insecurity. Says his father "He keeps checking my hairline. He wants to know his is going to be all right in 25 years."

At this rate, everything will be just fine. Catch up with George in The Thin
Red Line 18 June at 12 midnight on Sky Premiere.

From UK Hello magazine - June 19 2001