George Clooney criticizes Hollywood culture — now that he lives in France

Actor George Clooney says his children have a much better life growing up in France than they would have in Hollywood.

Clooney moved his family to France in 2024, taking root in Cotignac, a village in the southeast.

'I felt like they were never going to get a fair shake at life.'

After years of activism in the United States and abroad, Clooney revealed in an interview with Esquire that he did not want to raise his kids immersed in Hollywood culture, with their heads buried in technology and trying to avoid paparazzi.

"Yeah, we're very lucky," he told the outlet. "You know, we live on a farm in France. A good portion of my life growing up was on a farm, and as a kid I hated the whole idea of it. But now, for them, it's like — they're not on their iPads, you know? They have dinner with grown-ups and have to take their dishes in."

The interview with Clooney was painted as a majestic refuge for a star looking for a simple life, living on a farm with hundreds of acres of sprawling grapevines and olive trees, driving his kids around on a tractor.

"They have a much better life," Clooney continued. "I was worried about raising our kids in L.A., in the culture of Hollywood. I felt like they were never going to get a fair shake at life. France — they kind of don't give a s**t about fame. I don't want them to be walking around worried about paparazzi. I don't want them being compared to somebody else's famous kids."

Clooney's exodus from L.A. begs the question: Where in the world is a more progressive, Democrat-led landscape than California? The actor's history of activism would suggest he should feel right at home under Gov. Gavin Newsom (D).

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VALERIE MACON/AFP via Getty Images

The tip of the iceberg is Clooney's endorsement, and then retraction of support, for President Biden in 2024. Perhaps a condemnation from former first son Hunter Biden was enough for Clooney to want to permanently check out, but that was not exactly his first rodeo in politics.

Clooney was pictured sitting with then-Vice President Biden in 2009 before claiming that electing him as president in 2020 would be a "return to civility."

In 2012, Clooney and his father were arrested and released at a Washington, D.C., protest against alleged human rights abuses in Sudan by its government.

In 2020, Clooney and his and wife, Amal, donated $500,000 to the Equal Justice Initiative following George Floyd's death during the infamous "Summer of Love." The organization claimed at the time that the "United States did not commit to racial equality, [and] slavery did not end in 1865."

In their statements regarding policing in America, the group urged the country to "reimagine public safety and community health, reallocate funds from traditional policing to services that promote public safety and more effectively address the conditions that create poverty, inequality, and community distress."

Photo by ANNE-CHRISTINE POUJOULAT/AFP/Getty Images

Citing his father's insistence that it was his "civic duty" to stand up to bullies and racists, Clooney told People in 2020 that he felt he was in the same situation with his kids.

"I'm in the same situation as most fathers of 3-year-olds: I don't want my children when they're 15 years old to turn around and say, 'There was a time when they were putting kids in cages? ... And what did you do about that?'" Clooney boldly claimed.

"And if the answer is 'nothing,' then I would be ashamed," he said.

In 2019, Clooney continued his activism on behalf of Sudan, connecting it to a need for action against climate change.

"Global warming is making the desert larger; violence is moving people off the land — and they are moving by the millions,” he told CNN. "You care not just because it is the right thing to do, which it is, but because at one point or another, it is something that we will be dealing with," he claimed.

While the Clooneys call France their current home, they still own a villa in Italy, a home outside London, and residences in L.A. and New York City, according to Yahoo.

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