George Clooney does not think same-sex marriage should be an issue, but that doesn’t mean he is going to hit the campaign trail for the cause.
“I do believe it’s generational, much like the civil rights movement,” Clooney Clooney told E! Online at the Critic’s Choice Awards in Los Angeles Thursday night. “Young people started taking to the streets and things changed. This really is the final leg of the civil rights movement.”
Clooney, who has supported liberal causes in the past, said that gay marriage shouldn’t be a controversial issue.
Although he may have strong political opinions, “The Descendants” star said that actors should stick to the red carpet, rather than the campaign trail.
“I’ve never campaigned—even when my father ran for Congress,” he said. “I do fundraisers, but I don’t think it looks particularly good to have actors out there on stage.”
Clooney said that actors can be a polarizing presence, and that they can ultimately do more harm than good.
The polarizing effect certainly had an impact when his father, Nick Clooney, ran for an open congressional seat in Kentucky in 2004.
The press branded the race “Heartland vs. Hollywood,” and the negative press ultimately stymied the elder Clooney, who lost the race with just 44 percent of the vote.
Last October, Clooney, a lifelong Democrat, said that he prefers to stick to politics on-screen rather than in real life.
In the political thriller, “The Ides of March,” Clooney played a ruthless Democratic congressman running for president. He told ABC News that he hoped that nobody in Washington would learn anything from the film:
“I don’t want to go show this to Washington. I don’t want them to be taking notes,” he said.