George Clooney opens up in Nashville on Kentucky roots, humanitarian focus and dirty diapers

Nine-year-old George Clooney would have preferred to stay home on Christmas mornings and open presents. But, at his father's direction, his family first delivered gifts to families who had greater needs. 

"On Christmas morning, when we woke up, before we could open any presents we would drive an hour and a half to some stranger's home and spend the morning having Christmas with these people, bringing presents," Clooney said, speaking at Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center Tuesday at the Workhuman convention focused on workplace culture. "The understanding was that we are all in this together. It taught me so much. I hated it, by the way, at the time."

But for Clooney, those Christmas mornings were among the many experiences he had growing up in a small town in Kentucky that would influence his ongoing focus on humanitarian issues, he said. Coming of age during the Civil Rights movement and the Vietnam War would inspire his own activism, from protesting South Africa's Apartheid, to raising awareness about genocide in Darfur, to most recently developing the Clooney Foundation for Justice, an organization focused on reducing oppression in court systems around the world.

"My father's argument was, always challenge power and protect the powerless. Period. Always. No matter whether you feel powerful or not. That is your job," he said. "That carried with me."

While the Clooney family was not wealthy, Clooney said his father emphasized their great fortune to be born where they were born and thought their luck should be shared. 

"Luck needs to be shared," Clooney said. "We are a community. If we are only worried about our own doorstep, we are not going to succeed as a people and certainly not as a country."

Clooney also emphasized that much of the humanitarian work he has done has been riddled with failures. He described building a well in Sudan only to have it cause serious disputes with a neighboring community, also in need of a well. In Darfur, especially, Clooney said he failed often and it's hard to see clear impact.

But Clooney offered optimism about the capacity to improve some of the atrocities he has seen overseas and to address the challenges in the U.S. 

"It’s a frustrating time. We see a lot of autocrats and some pretty difficult things when you look around the world," he said. "Just as quickly as things go wrong is how quickly things can go well. We as a collective can be part of that. As individuals, it's really hard to do, but as a collective we can be part of fixing things."

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Growing up in Kentucky

Clooney described his childhood in Kentucky, a town of 1,100 people identified by his publicist as Augusta. There, he mowed lawns, wore clothes his mother made him and played on a basketball team often booked for homecoming games to ensure another team's victory. 

"We lost 26 of 27 games my senior year," he said. "It was as humiliating a time as you could ever imagine, but man was it fun. It was a great way to grow up."

Clooney also described the close-knit community that often develops in a small town. 

"All the things we see on cable news of people being unkind to one another doesn’t exist. They have to get along," he said. "I was really lucky to be raised in a small town like that."

As he got older, Clooney cut tobacco for $3.32 an hour, sold insurance door-to-door and worked at a liquor store at night. He described his father sitting with him at a liquor store after his own shift as TV anchor, worried about his son's safety. At a cousin's recommendation, he left for California to pursue acting.

Fatherhood

Clooney, a father of twins under age two, said he had underestimated the amount of excrement fatherhood would yield, but that he is struck by the magnitude of being a parent. 

"They are literally this tall and they make me feel tiny," he said. "I feel like there is something grander out there."

He often mocked his age, 57, predicting he will be shrinking as his children grow bigger. "Maybe we'll meet at like 13," he said. When considering his children's requests for check books and car keys in the years ahead, Clooney quipped, "Hopefully I'll be dead. I started late."

Clooney praised his wife Amal's "extraordinary" legal work but also her fortitude in breastfeeding twins. He said he would repeat "Mama" over and over again to his children to ensure they would reward her by saying her name before "Papa."

"I would sit over the bassinet and go, 'Mama, mama, mama, mama," he said. "If either one of those little s**** said 'Papa' first, I'm dead."

Clooney said his children are learning to count and say their ABCs in English and Italian. "I'm from Kentucky, you know," he said to laughter, adding. "English was the foreign language."

When a doctor informed him and Amal that they were expecting twins, Clooney said he fell silent. 

"It didn't really occur to me that was ever even a possibility," he said. "Amal said she's never seen me not talk for that long. ... Now we have got these two knuckleheads that just make us all laugh and bring so much joy into the house."

Reach Jamie McGee at 615-259-8071 and on Twitter @JamieMcGee_.