Will George Clooney ever settle down? [Stacy Keibler Mentioned]

AS George Clooney flashed that devastating grin around the glitzy parties of the Toronto Film Festival last month, a statuesque blonde beauty was never far from his side.

Although rumours of their relationship had been bubbling for a while, it was the first time the Hollywood star had been seen with former WWE wrestler Stacy Keibler.

That eternal bachelor George, 50, chose this international event to go public with his new girlfriend was surely not a coincidence.

After all, what better way to generate some publicity for his latest political thriller Ides of March?

Quite what his ex-lover Elisabetta Canalis thought about such breathtaking chutzpah is another matter. The couple’s two-year relationship ended a mere three months earlier when the Italian model foolishly dared to mention the M-word.

So what is it with gorgeous George? He’s spent the last two decades with an endless stream of beautiful women on his arm but has yet to settle down, apart from a short-lived marriage to actress Talia Balsam.

Reports from the US suggest his relationship with Stacy, 31, a woman who can easily hold her own in George’s exalted social circles, is already getting serious. And asked what she liked about the actor, she replied succinctly: “Everything!”

Will Ms Keibler be the woman to finally tame him or, as history would suggest, will she prove to be just another amusing – but ultimately meaningless – diversion?

Ask Oscar-winner George and he’ll admit he’s a reluctant believer in love at first sight. “We’d all like to believe in Cinderella – that she comes to the ball and their eyes meet and she’s perfect for him and he’s perfect for her. I don’t know that it necessarily works all the time,” he said.

“Then again, it happened to my parents. He asked her on a date and asked her to marry him immediately. They’re still together, so I know love at first sight can work.”

But not, it would seem, for Mr Clooney. While his parents Nick, a former TV anchor, and ex-beauty queen Nina have been happily married for 51 years, his first (and only) foray into this venerable institution was somewhat less successful.

His four-year union with actress Talia Balsam ended in 1993 and he has sworn never to marry again. In a TV interview earlier this year, George’s sentiments clearly hadn’t changed when he said of marriage: “I gave it a shot. I’ve proven how good I was at it.”

Perhaps Elisabetta, 33, wasn’t watching. Just a few months later, she gave an ill-advised interview to an Italian magazine, hinting strongly that a wedding and babies were on the cards. It turned out to be a huge mistake. While on holiday at his luxury Villa Oleandro on the shores of Italy’s Lake Como, the couple reportedly had a blazing row about her comments and George called it a day. Hardly surprisingly, given what he’s said about marriage in the past.

Explaining his decision to remain resolutely single, he once said: “We’d get into a fight and I’d just mentally leave. I’d think, ‘In a relationship, we should never have this kind of fight’. Then, instead of figuring out how to make it work, I’d look for a way to get out of it. The truth is, you shouldn’t be married if you’re that kind of person.”

He added: “I tried marriage and it didn’t work. I have had long relationships with women and they get bored with me working all the time. My fear is that I would make a lousy husband and I don’t want to put myself, or anyone else, through the pain of finding out. If I was my girlfriend, I wouldn’t put up with me for very long.”

His decision to end the relationship so abruptly should not have come as a shock to Elisabetta. He has previous form.

He dumped former cocktail waitress Sarah Larson, 32 – he swept her off their feet while she was working at a Las Vegas nightclub – in June 2008 after an 11-month romance, leaving her heartbroken.

It would seem commitment-phobe George, who found fame as troubled Dr Doug Ross in hit series ER, is a realist rather than a romantic. He’s the first to admit he’s a workaholic and he simply doesn’t have time for the demands of a full-on relationship.

He’s also a dedicated humanitarian campaigner, highlighting the crisis in Sudan with regular trips to Africa.

Although he does not like to discuss his private life – “I don’t like to share my personal life… it wouldn’t be personal if I did” – he once offered an insight into why his relationships falter. Discussing the 1999 breakdown of his three-year romance with French waitress Celine Balitran, whom he met in Paris, he said: “She was a really nice girl; wanted nothing more than was normal. Just to go out a few times and go to dinner. And I couldn’t do it. I was doing a full-time television show and simultaneously I did eight feature films. Throw in the element of being famous, which means that when I finish work on the set all these other people demand my attention.”

There has been a handful of significant others. He enjoyed a five-year on-off relationship with British model Lisa Snowdon, who memorably said: “We are so ordinary. We fart and belch and everything. It’s fantastic.” He’s also dated actress Renee Zellweger and Kelly Preston, who later married John Travolta. But no woman has, thus far, been enough to make former altar boy George want to change his ways.

He has no burning desire to become a father, either. “I’m too wrapped up in my work to think about children, I would need to show myself that I’m able to sustain a good long-term relationship before I could even imagine what being a father would be like,” he said. “It doesn’t seem like a smart thing for me to do, and I’m pretty adamant about that, I don’t have anything in me that says rush out and have kids. It’s the ultimate responsibility.”

He added: “I don’t know that I’d be a great dad. It’s not something that you can half-ass do. If you f*** up there, you’ve f***** up generations. I don’t want to be responsible for someone else that I could hurt.”

Despite his reputation – he’s twice been voted Sexiest Man Alive and was People magazine’s Most Eligible Bachelor - it’s reassuring to discover that George, like anyone, is capable of getting hurt.

He previously told this newspaper: “I’ve had some absolutely great relationships and some not so great relationships. I’ve had some easy and natural, made-sense break-ups as well as some rough ones. I deal with them the same way we all do: I’m successful with some and not so successful with others. “I don’t think my experiences are any different than anybody else’s, they’ve just been amplified a little more.”

That said, his most recent split from Elisabetta clearly hasn’t put him off women. George, who directed and stars as a presidential candidate in taut political thriller Ides of March, released in the UK later this month, didn’t waste any time in replacing his former love.

Although she arrived separately, former Dancing With The Stars contestant Stacy – whose legs measure an astonishing 42 inches – accompanied him to the Toronto premiere.

They were also spotted at two bashes, including the Vanity Fair party, where sources said she didn’t follow him around “like a puppy dog”, important to a man who clearly doesn’t like his women to be too needy.

George, who won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for Syriana in 2005, once said: “I’m the old-fashioned type who prefers to meet a woman in a more normal setting. I don’t like to feel that I’m being hunted down. I’ve always liked to do my own hunting when it comes to meeting women.”

But he’s not oblivious to the horrors of his advancing years, either: “My worst nightmare is being one of those old Lotharios.”

It all sounds rather promising for Stacy, but let’s not forget that this is a man whose longest live-in relationship has been with a Vietnamese pot-bellied pig called Max, who died in 2006 after they shared a home for 18 years.

George’s old friend Nicole Kidman famously bet him $10,000 he’d be married by the time he was 40. She sent him a cheque on his birthday, but he returned it, offering double or quits in 10 years’ time.

As of May, that milestone has been and gone but perhaps George has extended the bet to his 60th birthday, and maybe, just maybe, Nicole will one day find herself several thousand dollars richer…


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it's me wrote:
well... I'm talking about the love which fills your mind
and heart
and, in this case, for a person
not an image

.......
but an healthy love life
need ONLY one person
committed at ALL LEVELS
and hopely FOREVER

he can push everything
but not a person
to REALLY love him


need 2to tango

Katiedot wrote:You just have to meet his eyes across a ball. I'll leave you to figure out how to do that!

Katiedot wrote:I knew if i added those smileys tothe forum you guys would find a good use for them!

Dior wrote:Maybe he has also a big heart (like my best friend) and he can keep many, many girls in it...
He is just too precious for one person only, she should be fair and share him with the millions of his female fans.

pattygirl wrote:Well, cindy, if you're good at the game he might let you play with him. You never know where that can lead!