This actor is highly awarded for his many performances in different blockbuster movies as well as hit TV shows. But is Clooney a star singer as well as a star actor?
George Clooney has said himself that he cannot sing. While he does have famous singers in his family, Clooney is not one of them, preferring to stick only with acting.
Read on below to find out more about Clooney’s singing relatives as well as his own experience with singing.
Clooney Performers
The Clooney family is known for turning out lots of entertainers who go into the acting, singing, or television industries. While there is some crossover between them, George Clooney is strictly an actor.
His father, Nick Clooney, was an anchorman and host on television and had a short career in politics. Nick Clooney’s older sisters, and George Clooney’s aunts, were the true singers of the family, who also worked as actresses.
Rosemary Clooney is extremely well known and is often remembered on her birthday, May 23rd, with posts like this one or this one, showcasing her performing skills. She and her sister, Betty Clooney, were a singing sister act at the beginning of their careers.
Rosemary and Betty Clooney were very close, both with beautiful voices. The sisters were often compared, some preferring Rosemary and others rooting for Betty, but they remained close after splitting up to focus on their solo careers.
Betty even named one of her daughters after Rosemary. Betty’s TV career was cut short, as she passed away from a brain aneurysm in 1976.
Rosemary found great success as a singer and actress, performing even after she was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2001. Her last performance was in 2002, a few months before she died.
With the great legacy of The Clooney Sisters and their solo careers, one would think that the singing genes must have been passed on to someone in the family. So what are George Clooney’s experiences with singing?
O Brother, Where Art Thou?
Clooney’s only experience with trying to sing professionally came when he was filming O Brother, Where Art Thou?, a film that was written, produced, and directed all by Joel and Ethan Coen, or the Coen brothers.
The movie was a satire with ties to the epic Greek poem The Odyssey by Homer as well as American folklore from the south about the blues musician Robert Johnson who, as the story goes, sold his soul to the devil to be able to masterfully play the guitar.
It takes place during the Great Depression in Mississippi, and stars Clooney as well as John Turturro, Tim Blake Nelson, Chris Thomas King, Holly Hunter, and more.
While there were many stars involved with the film, the only actors to sing their characters’ parts were Nelson and King, while the rest were dubbed by professional musicians. Clooney was among the actors who didn’t sing.
But that doesn’t mean he didn’t try! He discovered that he couldn’t sing while filming the movie. As the nephew of Rosemary and Betty Clooney, T-Bone Burnett and the Coen brothers had assumed his ability to sing from the start–and so did Clooney himself.
“[T]hey assumed that because I was Rosemary’s nephew I would be a great singer, and I kind of assumed that too… Then we got in the recording studio and I sang ‘Man of Constant Sorrow’ with all the music playing and I finished and I looked up and there’s that glass booth with all of them in it and no one would look me in the eye,” he explained.
Since Clooney doesn’t sing, Dan Tyminski took over his part. The soundtrack of the film went on to win a Grammy Award for Album of the Year for American folk music.