LONDON: George Clooney was adamant about one thing last week: he was not attacking the president in his gripping new film about the Middle East — he was slamming the entire geopolitical system.

“It is not an attack on the Bush administration, but it is an attack on the system that has been in place for 60 or 70 years — oil always being at the centre of it,” the actor told an interviewer.

The debonair Clooney has clearly taken on an unlikely role: the new King of Liberal Hollywood.

Unseating old-time liberal ‘actor-vists’ such as Warren Beatty, Tim Robbins and director Rob Reiner, Clooney has now emerged as the leading political voice in Hollywood, winning plaudits from liberals and stinging attacks from conservatives.

His two most recent films have slammed a broad range of targets, including US foreign policy in the Middle East, the corruption of oil companies and the Red-baiting of the McCarthyite era.

In interview after interview, Clooney has spoken out on his favourite social issues and is a senior campaigner with the Make Poverty History movement that saw him recently lobby the president of the World Bank for aid to Africa alongside rock star Bono. “I’m an old-time liberal and I don’t apologize for it,” he recently told Newsweek.

It is a remarkable transformation for the man who first won the hearts of a generation of female fans in the hospital drama ER and whose early films included Return of the Killer Tomatoes. But it is a change that has won critical acclaim for his most recent politicized films and led to talk of him being rewarded at the Oscars ceremony next year.

In Syriana, Clooney’s latest work, which opened last week in New York, the actor plays a world-weary CIA agent caught in a web of political intrigue surrounding control of oil in the Middle East.

It is a complex story of interwoven plots which aims to expose the true realities of power in the world. Clooney was also executive producer on the film, which pulls no punches in its conclusion that the political system has become a slave to the oil industry.

“[Syriana] shakes us up and prompts us to question world policies ... We need more movies like this,” said Claudia Puig, a film reviewer for USA Today. Clooney also suffered for his art. He gained 35 pounds to play the pudgy middle-aged spy in Syriana and hid his good looks behind a bushy beard.

He also damaged his spine during filming, which saw him in such agony that he ended up drinking heavily to dull the pain.

Syriana came fast on the heels of Good Night and Good Luck, which Clooney directed and also acted in, a portrayal of the conflict between TV newsman Edward Murrow and the anti-communist witch-hunter, Senator Joseph McCarthy. The film tells how Murrow turned on McCarthy and eventually brought him down.

Clooney portrays the conflict as a principled stance by a campaigning liberal journalist who fought injustice and stood up against big, bullying politicians. It is a compelling story in its own right, but Clooney has never hidden the fact that it draws uncomfortable parallels with a post-11 September media seemingly cowed into being uncritical of White House policy.

The film has led many pundits to predict Oscars glory. Newsweek’s David Ansen called it ‘the most compelling American movie of the year so far’.—Dawn /The Observer News Service