From PEOPLE Magazine
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Just the prescription to keep the hardworking Clooney from turning into a dull boy. In the seven months since hanging up his scrubs as impetuous pediatrician Doug Ross on ER, Clooney has charmed fans and crew on the Atlantic seaboard (for Storm), in the Arizona desert (for the Gulf War drama Three Kings, opening Oct. 1), and in Jackson, Miss., where earlier this summer he played a 1930s chain-gang escapee in a movie titled—aptly enough—Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?
A fair question indeed for the peripatetic Clooney, 38, especially were it to have come from his live-in main squeeze of the past three years, willowy French model Céline Balitran, 24. For while an on-the-go, post-ER Clooney has been trying to set his big-screen career ablaze, the home fires have fizzled at the rambling eight-bedroom house in the Hollywood Hills that Balitran shared with him until last spring. Today her black BMW is parked 20 minutes away at her own white stucco bungalow, and Clooney's only roomie of note is his 150-pound potbellied pig, Max. "My understanding is that she left him," says a friend. "Céline is not one of those hangers-on."
For the most part, Clooney's protective coterie of friends and family-have been loath to discuss the breakup publicly. "I'm just the father," says former American Movie Classics host Nick Clooney, 64, from his home in Kentucky. "He doesn't talk to me about that sort of thing, and I'd never ask." But to others the split was an open secret. On the Brother set, where filming ended in August, "everybody knew that they had broken up," says a source, "but no one ever brought it up, and he never talked about it."
Finally, Clooney himself broke silence on the subject, confirming the split in October's Esquire. Insisting that he had "really adored" Balitran, Clooney said, "The truth is, it just became tougher and tougher for us to make it. she lasted as long as I think she was going to last. It was like, 'I don't really think I want to play anymore.' "
It was a sad endgame for a love affair that began on an evening in Paris in August 1996. During a short break while filming The Peacemaker, Clooney and an acquaintance, a Paris newspaper columnist, stopped for a drink at the trendy nightclub Barfly, where Balitran, a former French law student fluent in English (her father, Alain, owns a Parisian travel agency; her mother, Annie, works in a law office), was waitressing. Months later, the columnist, who helped arrange a meeting between the two, "got a call from Céline," he reports, "saying, 'Thank you. I'm in love with George in Los Angeles.' "
After that, the two made occasional forays on the L.A. party circuit but mostly visited flea markets, enjoyed quiet dinners at home and made a habit of throwing laid-back Sunday barbecues for friends. The 5'8" Balitran seemed an ideal match for the relentlessly casual Clooney. "He does tell me that when I'm natural, he finds me sexy!" Balitran, a part-time volunteer as a kindergarten teacher's assistant, told PEOPLE in 1997. "He could never put up with a woman who spent all her time at the beauty salon."
Though she signed with the Ford modeling agency in 1997 and did print ads and TV work, "my great happiness," she maintained, "is taking care of the house. I'd rather buy dishcloths for the kitchen than a dress." She and Clooney, she said, were "living a real beautiful love story that becomes more fascinating every day." As for the future, the two were taking it "one week at a time, no more. We live completely in the present."
But no more. Balitran, back in France last May at the Cannes Film Festival, was asked by a TV reporter about Clooney's absence. "Everything's fine," she answered curtly. In fact, says a friend, Balitran "was one minute out dancing in the nightclubs until 4 a.m. and the next moment crying on my shoulder about George."
For his part, Clooney has hardly seemed in need of anyone's shoulder. He has, in fact, been the picture of bonhomie on his recent movie sets. During filming in Mississippi, "he was always with the guys. He'd play basketball with the crew during breaks," says a source. "If he was ever in a bad mood or depressed, you couldn't tell. He was one happy guy."
The same held true in Gloucester, where, starring with Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio and Mark Wahlberg, Clooney squired his visiting father on the set and clowned with reporters at a Sept. 7 press conference. "We took this [fishing boat] out," Clooney said. "I parallel-parked it the first time and probably damaged your pier."
His undeniable charm aside, he was visited on-set by only one woman—his mother, Nina, 60—and friends saw no evidence of new potential love interests. When his first marriage, to Talia Balsam, daughter of the late actor Martin Balsam and Joyce Van Patten, ended after three years in 1992, Clooney gained 30 pounds and acquired a bleeding ulcer. "In marriage you're bound by what's expected of you," his close friend, actor Richard Kind (Spin City), later said. "He doesn't want to be expected to do anything."
But more recently, say friends, what really stands in the way of matrimony may be Clooney's own ambition. "If you hang out with George for even 10 minutes," his friend actor Tom Hinckley once said, "you would sense a sadness to him. He believes you have a choice. You either have a career or you have love."
Until now, Clooney's film career has sputtered through One Fine Day (1996) opposite Michelle Pfeiffer, The Peacemaker and the disastrous Batman & Robin (both in 1997) and last year's critically praised but little-seen Out of Sight. Even so, his asking price has risen to $10 million per film, and he has a string of projects in development through his Maysville production company, including a series pilot, Kilroy, for HBO. Earlier this month, Clooney told the Chicago Sun-Times that he had had "one very brief conversation" with executive producer John Wells about returning for a single guest appearance on ER (whose ratings took a precipitous drop after his departure) to the tune of $2 million. "It's been pretty frenetic," says his close friend and former housemate, producer Matt Adler, "but this is what he wants to do, is made to do—and really this is what he's best at—operating at this type of level: constant work."
Even if, as Clooney himself suggests, it sometimes takes a toll. "I didn't think that we lacked intimacy," he told Esquire of his relationship with Balitran. "Although...I kept sort of taking jobs, and the jobs kept taking me further and further away."
These days, Balitran is keeping no distance whatsoever from her current flame, Christian Gunn, 29, an ex-Armani model turned artist-photographer, who with his younger brother Justin runs Big Gunn Productions in Beverly Hills. Balitran "is real independent. She's a real complete person. And Christian is the same way," says a source close to Gunn. "They make each other laugh a lot. They go Rollerblading. They do young, fun things."
Which, for the time being at least, seem not to be Clooney's priority. "George wants to leave some kind of an imprint, not only as an actor but as a writer and a producer," says his father, Nick, with paternal pride. "He's a smart kid. I'm sure he'll do it all."
Susan Schindehette
Michelle Caruso and Michael Fleeman in Los Angeles, Peter Mikelbank in Paris, Anne Driscoll in Gloucester, Julie Jordan in Houston and Hayes Ferguson in Chicago
- Contributors:
- Michelle Caruso,
- Michael Fleeman,
- Peter Mikelbank,
- Anne Driscoll,
- Julie Jordan,
- Hayes Ferguson.
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