George Clooney

I mean, when he said he thought about me and I read it and I said, well, this guy's kind of a jerk.

I was like, wait, hang on a minute.

No, I, you know, I'm sure he thought about who could play it as much as he thought about who the character is.

You know, and you look at it and I understand his...

thought when you're going to write and direct this story, he wrote it with Emily Mortimer, is that the lead character should be someone that the audience has some familiarity with or thinks they know.

I think that's an advantage.

And also it's an age thing, right?

You got to be in your 60s.

And so I think there are only a few of us that sort of fit into that category.

And I'm sure he probably thought about...

uh some of the others and they you know um but he certainly i was certainly felt lucky that he came to me i can't tell you what uh what uh an honor it was to be sent the script and to read it and think well this is a part that i would love to play you know it's a it's very rare i know it doesn't it sounds unusual because i think everybody thinks

When you're at a certain position in your career that it's just everything kind of always falls into place, it's really hard to find good scripts, you know.

And scripts are everything.

You know, really good directors can't make a good film out of a bad script.

You can make a bad film out of a good script, but you can't do it the other way around.

So when you get a good script, it's rare, you know.

Well, you know, there was an idea I had about the Fourth Estate because...

We were in the middle of the war in Iraq and I'd been called a traitor to my country because I was against the war in Iraq.

But I wrote it because I felt like when the other three estates of government, when the executive branch and the legislative branch and the judicial branch dropped the ball, which had happened in the lead up to the war, the fourth estate has to, has to pick it up and has over the years, did in Vietnam, in

certainly helped in the civil rights movement during the McCarthy era with Edward R. Murrow.