WHAT'S EATING GEORGE CLOONEY?

He's having a career for the ages. He has two adorable kids, a brilliant and beautiful wife, a great new movie, and still has his hair. He enjoys power and influence and is loved by millions, and today he's relaxing at his gorgeous Italian lake house. There's just one problem.

- By Ryan D'Agostino Photographs by Christopher Anderson Styling by Anastasia Barbieri

DAWN

It's sunrise on Lake Como, and George Clooney's house is quiet.

An old man leans on a stone jetty nearby, his fishing pole perched on the wall and angled out over the lake, the line disappearing down into the water, a perfect triangle.

The window shades in the house are drawn. The Clooneys just arrived yesterday. The house is right there, visible from the water and from the old man's fishing spot: a large, elegant rectangle built in the eighteenth century with lovely tall windows, in the center of a small town, on the winding, narrow road that runs along the shore. On the small beach along the jetty, in the shadow of the house, two high school girls pick their way through damp seaweed, and they yelp when they dive into the cool morning water.

Clooney bought the house in the early 2000s with a plan he later abandoned. He had become pretty famous as an actor on ER, the pioneering prime-time hospital drama that pulled in more than thirty million viewers every Thursday while Clooney was on it, and he was on a motorcycle trip with some buddies to the Italian Alps. They stopped to have lunch with his friends Veronique and Gregory Peck, who were staying at the Villa d'Este, in Cernobbio. After lunch, Clooney's bike broke down, and he knocked on the door of this house looking for a phone. The owner, a Mr. Heinz, of the ketchup Heinzes, was sitting by the pool eating pizza, alone. They talked, and by the end of the afternoon he asked Clooney if he wanted to buy the house.

Ridiculous, Clooney said. He didn't have that kind of money.