Each day, when he’s working in Los Angeles, George Clooney squeezes himself into a goldfish bowl on wheels and braces himself for the pointing and stares that accompany his morning drive to the film studio. He could easily be in a car with privacy glass. He could be riding a Harley-Davidson and wearing a helmet to hide his identity. Instead he chooses to drive a car that is as unprotected from prying eyes as it is weird looking. Why does he do it? Because he believes the Tango, his electric one-seat-er, is the car of the future.

“It can be embarrassing,” he says. “There’s nowhere to hide, because it’s just me behind the wheel and there isn’t enough space for anyone else.

“But it goes from zero to 60mph in four seconds, which is faster than virtually every other car on the road, so I can take off with a burst of speed if I get too many insults.”

Whatever you think of his £45,000 British-built car, you have to admire Clooney for embracing a vehicle that’s all-electric rather than jumping on the petrol-electric hybrid Toyota Prius band-wagon like the rest of Hollywood.

“We are going to have to find a way to get away from oil,” he reasons. “It has to start with someone, somewhere, changing policy. I try and be photographed in the Tango and hope that someone thinks it’s a good idea.”

Clooney is serious about the oil issue but he has the intelligence to see the hypocrisy of globetrotting celebrities trying to preach clean living. How did he travel to the Venice film festival where we meet, for example?

“Private jet,” he says openly. “I know . . . I know. I can’t be a spokesman for the environment, because of things like that. Anyone can ask, ‘So how was the jet ride over?’ I don’t think electric cars are going to save the world, but at least it’s a start.”

Clooney is a believer in small starts. He was a struggling actor the wrong side of 30 before he hit the big time as Dr Doug Ross in ER. “I was unfamous for an awfully long time,” as he puts it.

Now indisputably in the big league, he’s trying not to let it go to his head. “The problem with famous people is they start to think, ‘I’m famous because I earned it.’ The truth is, they got lucky.

“My aunt, Rosemary Clooney [the late American singer], was a big star in the 1950s, but by 1955 she was gone. She was just 24 years old and all washed up.

“She did not become less of a singer in those years. But she didn’t understand it, so became a nut for 20 years, took every drug known to man and had nervous breakdowns until she finally got her act together. So if my confidence is based only on how a film will do at the box office, then I’m in trouble.”

Fortunately Clooney retains a healthy line in self-deprecating humour, is a notorious practical joker with a close circle of friends and remains, 15 years after the demise of his brief first marriage, the most eligible bachelor in Hollywood. Nicole Kidman and Michelle Pfeiffer once famously bet him $10,000 a piece that he would be married with children by the time he was 40. They honoured the wager, both sending cheques in the post on the actor’s 40th birthday. Clooney sent the cheques back, offering them double or nothing that he would still be single at 50.

For a while, Lisa Snowdon, a British model, shared the seat of one of a string of Harley-Davidsons. Then, most recently, Sarah Larson, 29, a reality TV contestant and cocktail waitress, was in the hot seat. Clooney managed to keep that relationship under wraps until he crashed a Harley in New Jersey last September, earning them both a real-life trip to ER. Clooney escaped with a fractured rib; Larson with two broken toes. For a while there was speculation that the accident might have brought the couple closer together. But no. Larson moved out of Clooney’s Los Angeles pad a couple of months ago, and in interviews he still reserves his most tender eulogies for Max, his Vietnamese potbellied pig, which died in 2006.

Right now he’s eagerly awaiting the arrival of his next electric dream machine. With the delivery of his Tesla Roadster, scheduled for later this year, he will finally have an electric car worthy of People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive, 1997 and 2006. The Tesla, built in California by Tesla Motors, has the streamlined looks of a supercar. Clooney “can hardly wait”. “They’re like Ferraris,” he says. “It’s going to make less of a dent on my pride [than the Tango].”

He’ll even have room for a passenger. “I can make friends again,” he says with a smile. And break a few more hearts, hey George?

MY STUFF...

ON MY CD CHANGER

Anything byT Bone Burnett. He produced the score for O Brother, Where Art Thou?, the Coen brothers’ movie in 2000 [which starred Clooney as one of a trio of escaped convicts in 1930s America].

The soundtrack went on to win three Grammy awards, including the one for best album. Burnett was also the guy to convince me that I could not sing on the soundtrack, so maybe I owe him one. I also like country music generally – I am a Kentucky boy, after all

ON MY DVD PLAYER

My favourite movies are all between 1964 and 1976. They did not always end in a comfortable way. But it’s hard to beatThe Verdict(1982). And anything, from the past, with James Stewart

I WOULD NEVER THROW AWAY

Pictures of Max, my dearly departed potbellied pig. You can’t replace a good pig Born in Kentucky in 1961, George Clooney is the son of a former beauty queen and a TV anchorman. When he failed to make the Cincinnati Reds baseball team he turned to acting, his break coming in 1994 with ER, the hospital television drama. He went on to star in films such as Ocean’s Eleven and Michael Clayton. He was married to the actress Talia Balsam, but is now single