What is the best George Clooney acting performance of all time?

From a silver-tongued Depression-era fugitive to a world-weary CIA operative, George Clooney has spent decades proving that movie-star charisma and serious dramatic chops aren't mutually exclusive. He's won an Oscar, directed acclaimed films, and still made espionage look effortless. Which performance is his definitive work?

1. 1
   Michael Clayton

   A morally conflicted law firm fixer forced to confront corporate wrongdoing in this taut 2007 legal thriller.
2. 2
   Matt King

   A Hawaiian land baron grappling with family secrets while his wife lies in a coma in The Descendants (2011).
3. 3
   Ryan Bingham

   A corporate downsizer who lives in airports until an unexpected romance challenges his detached lifestyle in Up in the Air (2009).
4. 4
   Bob Barnes

   An aging CIA operative caught in the geopolitical web of Middle Eastern oil politics in Syriana (2005), earning Clooney an Oscar.
5. 5
   Ulysses Everett McGill

   A silver-tongued escaped convict leading two hapless companions through Depression-era Mississippi in O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000).
6. 6
   Danny Ocean

   The impossibly cool mastermind orchestrating an audacious Las Vegas casino heist in Ocean's Eleven (2001).
7. 7
   Seth Gecko

   A violent, unpredictable criminal who ends up in a vampire bar in Mexico in From Dusk Till Dawn (1996).
8. 8
   Lt. Col. Archie Gates

   A cynical Special Forces officer leading a rogue gold heist mission in post-Gulf War Iraq in Three Kings (1999).
9. 9
   Fred Friendly

   CBS News executive championing Edward R. Murrow's stand against McCarthyism in Good Night, and Good Luck (2005), a film Clooney also directed.
10. 10
    Augustine Lofthouse

    A dying Arctic scientist desperately trying to warn returning astronauts of Earth's fate in The Midnight Sky (2020), a film he also directed.
11. 11
    Dodge Connelly

    A fading 1920s football star scheming to save his team and romance a journalist in Leatherheads (2008), a film he also directed.
12. 12
    Lyn Cassady

    A former Army psychic spy recounting bizarre covert operations to a baffled journalist in The Men Who Stare at Goats (2009).
13. 13
    Harry Pfarrer

    A dim-witted CIA analyst tangled in a darkly comic Coen Brothers farce of misunderstandings in Burn After Reading (2008).