London

George, We Love You!

2/14/03

The last thing an insecure British bloke needs the night before Valentine's day is his girlfriend running into George Clooney.

However for a host of unlucky chaps that's exactly what happened in Notting Hill last night. Clooney made an appearance for the UK premiere of Solaris at the Electric cinema on Portobello Road and, lo and behold, a gaggle of females were on hand to giggle and blush over the dashing star.

And to make matters worse, old George doesn't even have a valentine's date. "I have to work tomorrow," he told Empire Online. "I feel a little ripped off…

I won't get any flowers. It's a little disturbing, I've got to tell you."

But if the assembled men looked on in disgust as their ladyfriends swooned, all was put right by the arrival of not unattractive female guests Thandie Newton, Gillian Anderson and George's lovely co-star Natascha McElhone.

"George is full of surprises," said McElhone, "and I think this is the first of many. Now that he's in a position where he can make the choices he wants to make and he directs and has a production company, I think we'll see a lot of other things unravelling that people won't expect.

When you're marketed in a certain way then people expect you to go on and on like that but when people have intelligence and imagination then they want to branch out and try different things."

Solaris is not your average sci-fi shooter, taking a more ponderous and emotionally complex look at space and alien life as a psychiatrist journeys to the titular space station to discover what has happened to her crew.

After the film took a beating at the US box office, does director Steven Soderbergh think it will fare better before British audiences? "Well, they're so much smarter over here aren't they?" He quipped. "So we're gonna do fine."