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

Michael Clayton

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

2

Matt King

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

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

Bob Barnes

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

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

Danny Ocean

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

7

Seth Gecko

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

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

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

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

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

Lyn Cassady

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

13

Harry Pfarrer

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