I\u2019m Glenn Whipp, columnist for the Los Angeles Times and host of The Envelope newsletter. Looking for a good sushi recommendation? Read on. George Clooney has got you covered. <\/p>\n
Sign up for The Envelope <\/p>\n
Get exclusive awards season news, in-depth interviews and columnist Glenn Whipp\u2019s must-read analysis straight to your inbox.<\/p>\n
By continuing, you agree to our Terms of Service<\/a> and our Privacy Policy<\/a>. <\/p>\n You can take the actor out of L.A. … (Jennifer McCord \/ For The Times)<\/p>\n I sat down with Clooney a couple of months ago for an Envelope cover story<\/a> that just published this week. Sometimes that\u2019s how these things work. I don\u2019t schedule the pieces; I just write them. <\/p>\n In the intervening time, it came out that Clooney and his wife, Amal, with whom he has never argued (we got into this, stopping just short of our own squabble), have been granted French citizenship. This after the couple recently sold their estate in Studio City<\/a>, a home Clooney bought in 1995.<\/p>\n What gives? I ask him. You abandoning L.A.?<\/p>\n \u201cNo!\u201d Clooney answers quickly, saying the family, which includes 8-year-old twins Alexander and Ella, still has an apartment here, a \u201cbig apartment.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve been there in that house for 30 years, and it was time to move,\u201d Clooney says. \u201cWe got a place about four years ago in France, and we spent a good amount of time there, enjoying it. There\u2019s an anonymity living there. That\u2019s good for the kids. But L.A.\u2019s still a big part of home for me too because it\u2019s where I found success. It\u2019s where I made all my friends. I know every back street. I know all the shortcuts.\u201d <\/p>\n Shortcuts? Clooney isn\u2019t spilling any secrets. But he will declare his love for Studio City on the record. <\/p>\n \u201cWhen I first moved there in 1990 from Hollywood, the big knock was, \u2018Oh, s\u2014, you moved to the Valley. You sold out.\u2019 And now the Valley\u2019s really happening. I loved being in Studio City. They\u2019re two or three of the best sushi bars in the world \u2014 literally, the world.\u201d<\/p>\n Names, please. <\/p>\n \u201cAsanebo<\/a> and Katsu<\/a> are spectacular,\u201d Clooney says. \u201cAnd I could almost walk there from my house. Irresistible.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI liked Studio City a lot, but listen, I liked Hollywood too,\u201d Clooney continues. \u201cI lived there in the \u201880s when it was gritty, but it was fun. Melrose Avenue was crazy. It was all punk rockers. It\u2019s changed, but there\u2019s still a little energy to it.\u201d<\/p>\n Talking shortly after the Dodgers won a second consecutive World Series, I wonder if all these years in Los Angeles had converted Clooney, a Kentucky native who grew up rooting for the Cincinnati Reds during the Big Red Machine era, into being a Dodgers fan. <\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m a National League guy, so I rooted for the Dodgers over the Blue Jays and I was happy they won,\u201d Clooney says. \u201cHaving gone to that \u201875 World Series<\/a> \u2014 my dad took me to a couple of games \u2014 I was excited to see a World Series as exciting as that one.\u201d<\/p>\n We get to talking about Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto, the Dodgers starting pitcher who won three games, including a complete-game victory, and came back on no days rest to finish Game 7<\/a>. <\/p>\n \u201cNobody throws a complete game these days,\u201d Clooney says. \u201cI blame [Reds manager] Sparky Anderson for that.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cCaptain Hook,\u201d I interject, a nickname Anderson earned for pulling pitchers early. \u201cHe\u2019d bring in Rawly Eastwick and Will McEnaney.\u201d <\/p>\n I stop, dumbfounded how I just conjured the names of two Cincinnati Reds relief pitchers from a half-century ago. How do I remember those names and not what I ate for breakfast yesterday?<\/p>\n \u201cThink about this way,\u201d Clooney says. \u201cIt\u2019s like music and films, too. I will be sitting with my wife watching a film that I haven\u2019t seen in 40 years and go, \u2018Oh, he\u2019s about to say this.\u2019 There\u2019s something funny about those things imprinting your mind. It\u2019d be easier to learn a language if you learned it as a song. \u2018Michelle, ma belle.\u2019<\/a> We all remember that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Do Actor Awards voters have a problem with subtitles? It would seem so, though I think motion picture…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":504074,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[220047,1037,1582,276,65141,4446,1020,2961,26822,224,2444,5337,199685,2089,3196,50,2450,220048,14164,8066],"class_list":{"0":"post-504073","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-97th-oscars","9":"tag-art","10":"tag-ca","11":"tag-california","12":"tag-daily-life","13":"tag-death","14":"tag-film","15":"tag-la","16":"tag-last-week","17":"tag-los-angeles","18":"tag-los-angeles-times","19":"tag-losangeles","20":"tag-lynch","21":"tag-man","22":"tag-movie","23":"tag-news","24":"tag-thursday","25":"tag-times-writer","26":"tag-way","27":"tag-work"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115866001982594741","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504073","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=504073"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504073\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/504074"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=504073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=504073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=504073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/1767974771_651_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n