George Clooney Collects Venice's Golden Lion, Takes a Swing at Trump, and Credits His Wife for Putting ISIS on Trial
George Clooney received the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the 83rd Venice Film Festival on Wednesday night, then returned to the festival's Match Point Arena on Thursday for a wide-ranging masterclass that covered his career, American politics, and the work of his wife, human rights lawyer Amal Clooney (The Hollywood Reporter).
The 65-year-old actor and director was honoured alongside Ellen Burstyn at this year's festival, which opened on 2 September 2026 (La Biennale di Venezia; The Hollywood Reporter). George and Amal Clooney had arrived in Italy ahead of the opening ceremony, with photographs of their appearance circulating on 1 September (Harper's Bazaar).
During the masterclass, Clooney drew a line between a famous Coen brothers character and the current occupant of the Oval Office. In the 2000 film O Brother, Where Art Thou?, he played Ulysses Everett McGill, an escaped convict whom director Joel Coen described as thinking he is "the smartest guy in every room you walk in." Clooney told the Venice audience: "Look, we have a president [like that]," prompting laughter (The Hollywood Reporter).
He said he receives mean tweets from the President of the United States and that he can handle it. He defended actors who speak out on political and human rights issues, saying he did not give away his freedom of speech when he became an actor (The Hollywood Reporter).
The thread running through the appearance was the influence of Clooney's family. He recalled his father, 92-year-old journalist and anchorman Nick Clooney, telling him his responsibility was to "challenge people with more power than you and to defend people with less power than you." George and Amal co-founded the Clooney Foundation for Justice, and the actor spoke about his efforts to draw attention to the genocide in Darfur, Sudan, in 2003. He said Amal later put some of the perpetrators on trial and got them jailed, roughly two decades later (The Hollywood Reporter).
The loudest applause of the session came when Clooney called his wife a "badass." He said she is the only person to have ever put ISIS on trial and won, earning thunderous applause from the audience (The Hollywood Reporter).
Amal Clooney is a British-Lebanese international human rights lawyer whose casework has included representations before international courts. The festival's masterclass series at the Match Point Arena featured three sessions by directors and performers, with Clooney's included in the Biennale Cinema live-streaming schedule (La Biennale di Venezia).
Clooney's connection to Venice goes back more than two decades. His film Good Night, and Good Luck premiered at the festival in 2005 and won Venice's screenplay prize. The masterclass also touched on the Warner Bros. Discovery merger and what Clooney described as the death of the movie star (The Hollywood Reporter; The Hollywood Reporter).
Online tickets for the 2026 Biennale Cinema went on sale on 11 August via the Vivaticket platform (La Biennale di Venezia).
