QUOTE OF THE DAY: George Cloney

[ON MARRIAGE AND KIDS]

"I don't expect to ever get married again or have children...."

"I am always working and have so many interests, outside acting," he says. "If I was them, I would never put up with me for long - and they don't."

"I do begin to wonder, 'Am I going to berelegated to these three-year relationships for the rest of my life?' My trouble is that I keep on taking jobs, and jobs take me further away from home.

"I remember Celine, who I really adored.

The truth is, it became tougher and tougher for us to make it. She lasted as long as I think she was going to last. Then it was a case of, 'I don't really think I want to play any more'.

"I understand it. Iamnot married, I don't have kids. What I really have is work. I like being on a film set, freezing my ass off, or whatever." George has always made work his No1 priority, yet did find time to marry actress Talia Balsham in 1989. It lasted only four years.

"We had gone out for a long time, on and off," he says. "What I was not prepared for was the idea that if things start going really badly you need to work them out.

"I was 28 years old and not as tolerant as I could have been. I was also not as willing to fix things as I should have been.

"Had marriage come later in life, I would probably have understood better how to make it work.

Divorce, to me, meant failure.

"My parents muscled through the tough times in their marriage, because they did not want to separate or divorce. They were different times.

"So I didn't learn much from my own marriage, because I did not let it be a learning experience." He tells a story of how he was introduced to the facts of Hollywood life very early by actor Miguel Ferrer, eldest son of his singer aunt Rosemary Clooney.

"I remember Miguel took me for a drive up Sunset Boulevard. We pull up at a stoplight and all these girls come up to the car and ask, 'Baby, do you want to party? You want to party with me?' "I was like, 'Girls love me, man.

I am on fire in Hollywood. I should have come a long time ago.' And Miguel says, 'They are hookers, you idiot'.

"I had never seen a prostitute in my life, coming from Kentucky. But there I was, fooled completely.

I realised I had a lot to learn about Hollywood, life and women."

[MORE.....]

"People keep on asking me, 'Don't you want to have e kids?' I have not wanted to have kids. Then they say, 'Aren't you afraid of dying alone?' "But we all die alone. I remember uncle George sitting in uncle George sitting in bed, 68 years old. He looked at me and said, 'What a waste'. I don't know whether he was talking about his drinking or whether it was about life in general. He did not live up to his own early promise.

"I came to the conclusion that I was not going to wake up one day in my sixties and say, 'What a waste'. I was going to grab as much out of this life as I could.

"And that is what has happened so far - with no regrets."

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