FATIMA, WHAT ELSE ? …International Press Speculates on George Clooney’s Latest Flame: Fatima Bhutto, the niece of late Pakistan’s Martyred Prime Minister
|
|
By Darius KADIVAR
Ever Since their first meeting at an international conference
last year, Hollywood Heartthrob George Clooney and Journalist, Poet
and activist Fatima Bhutto (niece of Benazir Bhutto the former slain
Prime Minister of Pakistan) have been subject to a great deal of
speculation and scrutiny in the International press. Some sources
even claimed that the Film Star quickly fell for her. The
Current Affairs reported last month quoting a source from
The National Enquirer that the Film Star (notorious for his numerous
and short-lived liaisons ) “Is hoping to take the relationship with
the 26-year-old poet-journalist to the next level and spend some
serious time with her in the US. Tricky long distance, Pakistan-to-US
dating logistics aside, we think the two would make a nice couple.
I mean, just look at her CV. She’s a far cry from Clooney’s last
girlfriend, the ‘Fear Factor’ contestant, Sara Larson. Fatima Bhutto
did her graduation in Middle Eastern studies from Barnard and a
masters in South Asian Studies from University of London. So she’s
educated”.
According to the newspaper, Clooney, 47, is also said to
be uncharacteristically serious about her, especially considering
how smart and independent she is …
Although Clooney has been able to keep the relationship under
wraps, in private he is said to be gushing to pals about the raven-haired
Fatima.
“Fatima was educated at Columbia University… and knew of
his heartthrob reputation, but she didn’t take his advances seriously
because she thought their age difference - not to mention where
they each lived - would make a serious relationship impractical.
But Clooney has courted her by phone and e-mail and arranged to
meet her abroad when their schedules allowed it.”
The pair are said to have met last year at a conference (George
goes to them in
his capacity as a United Nations Messenger of Peace,
Fatima as a journalist) and agreed to keep in touch. When he broke
up with shapely waitress Sarah Larson, 30, late last summer, his
interest in Fatima apparently began to grow.
For a while George has been the subject of more Random Couple Alerts than almost anyone else in show business, the signs are unmistakable that, at 47, graying, childless and possibly losing his vogue, he is ready to settle down. He has done all the liberal cause-mongering an actor of his stature could reasonably do, and with his hero Obama safely in the White House (”the best candidate there has ever been,” he said), it was time to turn his attention to international affairs.
The Bhutto Family have become to Pakistan what the Kennedy’s have been to the US political landscape. Their name goes hand-in-hand with the turbulent politics and violent history of Pakistan. In a country in a state of crisis - inflicted by religious fundamentalism, awash with factionalism and corruption and beset by economic collapse – some expect Fatima to stand for office as other members of her family have in the past. Although she claims not to believe in “birthright politics”, many political observers believe that she will contest her aunt Benazir’s old seat, in the family fiefdom of Larkana, north of Karachi, in the next general election. It is too early to say if these elections will be a turning point in the life of Benazir Bhutto’s niece who has made her name largely as a newspaper columnist (*) and author of two books of poetry.
Educated in New York and London, equally at home in the cultures
of the East and West, her celebrity has grown to the point where
she causes a stir wherever she surfaces. Attracted by her good looks
and glossy aura, a film producer recently offered her a part in
a big-budget Bollywood musical, but she backed-off. The Bhutto
brand, she sensibly reasoned, will only stretch so far.
But Fatima’s life has been to date anything but a fairy tale. In 1996 her father, Murtaza, Benazir’s younger brother was killed in mysterious circumstances. Like almost everything that happens within or around the wealthy Bhutto dynasty, her father’s death was surrounded by rumors and intrigue, which raised suspicion and bitterness that have since strongly tainted her family relationships.
Murtaza came into the spotlight when his father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Pakistan’s prime minister from 1973-1977, was arrested and sentenced to death by the country’s military dictator, General Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq. The execution was to radicalize the Bhutto family’s supporters, and once abroad Murtaza, with his brother, Shahnawaz, embarked on a campaign of violent reprisals. While living in exile in Kabul, Afghanistan, Murtaza married a local woman, and in May 1982, Fatima, their only child, was born. But the parents soon divorced but Bhutto traveled with her child first to Tripoli, then France and later Damascus. She grew up basically as an itinerant exile always on the move, and constantly threatened of being targeted by agents of Pakistan’s security forces. In Syria, her father remarried Ghinwa Itoui, a Lebanese ballet teacher, who truly substituted Fatima’s real mother and became her political mentor.
In 1993, with Zia gone, her aunt Benazir was elected as prime
minister of Pakistan, Murtaza returned home to wild celebrations.
Yet any hopes that the country would enter into a benign Bhutto-ruled
period of constructive calm were shattered as brother and sister
clashed over the sharing of power, and, particularly, the role of
Benazir’s ambitious but much-distrusted husband Asif Ali Zardari,
today the country’s president.
Murtaza was shot dead in a confrontation with police in Karachi
three years later.. The circumstances remain disputed - the police
say Bhutto’s bodyguards pulled guns on them, while survivors of
the entourage claim it was a straight rub-out - but the result was
a rift between Benazir and her niece, that lasted until the latter’s own violent death in December 2007.
A few months earlier, when Benazir returned to Pakistan after
many years of exile in London, Fatima had indignantly written: “Ms
Bhutto’s political posturing is pure pantomime… I am suspicious
of her talk of securing peace. My father, a vocal critic of her
policies, was killed in a carefully planned police assassination
while she was prime minister.”
It was only with the shock of Benazir’s death that Fatima
showed a glimmer of forgiveness. “My aunt and I had a complicated
relationship,” she wrote in her weekly column. “That is the sad
truth. In death there is, perhaps, a moment to call for calm. To
say, enough, we cannot take this madness any more.”
Today the Bhutto clans seem to be slowly but surely setting
their differences aside. The country’s increasing problems are seems
to offer an opportunity for a comeback of the Bhutto’s at the center
of Pakistan’s political arena. Many observers believe Fatima is
may well be waiting for the right moment to make a move.
In contrast George Clooney’s life seems to have been a carefree
and steady road to success and international fame. Yet there are
more similarities between the two that meets the eye. Other than
sharing a common taste for Journalism, George Like Fatima, also
belongs to a Dynasty in the Public Eye but one of Entertainers and
Journalists. Like Fatima he had a difficult relationship with Her
Aunt Rosemary Clooney, was a TV icon Entertainer of the 60’s and
70’s who tried to discourage Clooney’s early endeavors as a struggling
actor in Hollywood in the mid 80’s and 90’s. He grew in the shadow
of his famous father Nick Clooney who led a successful career as
a journalist, anchorman and game show host, as well as a politician
from the state of Kentucky.
Nick had a five-year stint as
a news anchor in Lexington, Kentucky, then went to Ohio to host
his own TV show, the "Nick Clooney Show", first in Columbus,
Ohio for WLWC television in the late 60s, then for
Cincinnati's WCPO
Channel 9 in 1969, and finally with its greatest degree of
success for Cincinnati's WKRC-TV Channel 12 through the early 70s.
The "Nick Clooney Show" was a local morning show, with
a variety and talk-show format. In 1974, he gained his first national
fame by hosting the short-lived ABC
daytime game show The Money
Maze. He later became the news director and anchor for
WKRC-TV, then an ABC
affiliate, and the former home of his talk and variety show.
As a journalist, he is probably best remembered for his hard-hitting
coverage of the 1977 Beverly Hills Supper Club fire and its aftermath, which stretched for several years. Many
people in the region first heard about the fire from Clooney when
WKRC interrupted its Saturday night prime time schedule to broadcast
news of the fire. Clooney pursued a hard news focus that was quite
different from the sensationalism often seen on local TV. Under
his leadership, WKRC-TV became a solid #1 in the local news ratings,
dethroning CBS affiliate WCPO, which had controlled ratings for
more than two decades under Al Schottelkotte's leadership. After
leaving WKRC in 1984, Clooney worked in Los Angeles, California
as the 5 p.m. and 11 p.m. co-anchor at KNBC-TV, and Salt Lake City,
Utah, as an anchor. he returned to WKRC-TV in the late 1980s, but
by that time, the NBC affiliate, WLWT, was #1 in the late newscast
with Jerry Springer as its main anchor; Clooney was not able to
lead WKRC back to ratings leadership as he had done in the past. Nick Clooney then entered print
media in 1989 with a column in The Cincinnati Post, then
in 1994 after a short stint as a local NBC affiliate's news anchor
in Buffalo, New York on WGRZ, resurfaced nationally
in television as a host and researcher for the cable channel American
Movie Classics, where he introduced and presented backgrounds of
classic movies, along with Bob Dorian. He also worked as a presenter
on a Cincinnati oldies radio station, WSAI-AM until his retirement.
A Family Legacy that was truly
weighing heavy on the shoulders of the young George Clooney who
hesitated several years between a stable journalistic career and
that of a poorly paid and uncertain career in the movies. He boldy
took up the challenge by choosing acting over journalismn to the
dismay of both his parents and aunt, but his choice proved right
and payed off overtime and against all expectations turning him
into one of the most respected and beloved International Stars of
his generation earning him even a Golden Globe and an Oscar.
His First major breakthough came
with the TV series ER in the role of Dr. Doug Ross. He starred in
movies while appearing in ER, and his first major Hollywood
role being From Dusk Till Dawn,
directed by Robert Rodriguez. He followed its success with One Fine Day
with Michelle Pfeiffer and The Peacemaker
with Nicole Kidman, the latter being the initial
feature length release from Dreamworks SKG studio. Clooney was then
cast as the new Batman (succeeding Val Kilmer, who in turn, had succeeded Michael Keaton)
in Batman & Robin,
however the film was critically panned for its camp style. In 1998,
he starred in Out of Sight, opposite Jennifer Lopez.
This was the first of many collaborations with director Steven Soderbergh.
He also starred in Three Kings
during the last weeks of his contract with ER.
After leaving ER, George
Clooney starred in major Hollywood successes, such as The Perfect Storm
and O Brother, Where Art
Thou?. In
2001, he teamed up with Soderbergh again for Ocean's Eleven,
a remake of the 1960s Rat Pack film of the same name. To this day,
it remains Clooney's most commercially successful movie, earning
approximately US$444,200,000 worldwide. The film spawned two sequels
starring Clooney, Ocean's Twelve in 2004 and Ocean's Thirteen
in 2007. In 2001, Clooney founded the production studio Section
Eight with Steven Soderbergh. Clooney is generally considered Chief
Actor.
Clooney’s
Father’s Journalistic career on TV and George’s keen interest in
international issues also reflect in the choice of some of his films.
He made his directorial debut
in the 2002 film Confessions of
a Dangerous Mind, an adaptation of the autobiography
of TV producer Chuck Barris. Though the movie didn't do well at
the box office, Clooney's direction was praised among critics and
audiences alike. In 2005, Clooney starred in Syriana, which was based loosely on former
Central Intelligence Agency agent Robert Baer and his memoirs of being an agent
in the Middle East. The same year he directed, produced, and starred
in Good Night, and Good
Luck., a film about 1950s television journalist
Edward R. Murrow's
famous war of words with Senator Joseph McCarthy. Both films received critical
acclaim and decent box-office returns despite being in limited release.
At the 2006 Academy Awards, Clooney was nominated for Best Director
and Best Original Screenplay for Good Night, and Good Luck,
as well as Best Supporting Actor for Syriana. He became the
first person in Oscar history to be nominated for directing one
movie and acting in another in the same year. He would go on to
win for his role in Syriana ( Read Syriana
breaks Iranian Stereotypes )
In
many ways Clooney also brought back not just some of the old fashioned
Hollywood Glitter that in recent years had been overlooked, but
more importantly he brought back some of the moral consiousness
in his films that were previously embodied by such great Stars like
Paul Newman, Robert Redford or Jane Fonda, who used their “Fame”
to advance some of their own beliefs be it in political, social
or environmental issues that they felt needed attention. In recent
years Clooney has been a spokesman for Hollywood Unions during the
lingering Screen Writers Strike, has brought the tragedy of refugees
in Darfur to World attention through a documentary he made with
his father and has been recently named Peace Ambassador for the
United Nations.
So how true are the allegations of a romance between the Hollywood Star and the young and Rising New Beauty of the Bhutto Family ? Only Time will say …
What is certain however is that contrary to
one of Rudyard Kipling’s infamous verse in His “Ballad of East and
West” :
“Oh, East is East and West is West and never
the twain shall meet.” That East and West do Actually meet more than often simply
thanks to mankind’s greatest flaw: LOVE !
The Story of Hollywood Goddess Rita
Hayworth and Persian Prince Aly Khan or that of
German Bakhtiary Soraya
Esfandiary and the Shah of Iran are some of the
ones that come to mind. They were alas in these two cases short-lived
but that is after all a risk all lovers take. What we can all hope for, if the romance is confirmed, is
that it will be an enduring and happy relationship for two people
in the public eye, who in turn may become role models for other
similar Love Stories. Proving if needed that Rudyard Kipling was
indeed DAMN WRONG ! ;0)
VIVE L'AMOUR !
Authors Notes:
(*) Articles by Fatima Bhutto on payvand see Below
Recommended Readings:
On George Clooney:
By George ! : Hollywood Star and
U.N. Messenger of Peace by Darius KADIVAR George
Clooney's Great Escape by Darius KADIVAR
|
