For nearly thirty years, the arrival of George Clooney at the Venice Lido has followed a familiar ritual: the motorboat gliding across the lagoon, the step onto the dock, the flash of cameras on the red carpet. In 1998, he was a television star testing the waters of cinema with Out of Sight; by 2024, he was a veteran trading quips with Brad Pitt at the premiere of Wolfs. This September, the journey will culminate not with a new film, but with the Golden Lion for lifetime achievement, an honour that the 83rd Venice Film Festival announced on Monday.

Clooney, 65, responded with the self-deprecating wit that has long been part of his public persona. “It probably means I’m old, but I’ll take it,” he said in a statement, adding that the festival was “without a doubt my favourite.” The award, decided by the Biennale’s board on the proposal of artistic director Alberto Barbera, places Clooney in a lineage of honorees that in recent years has paired a director and an actor, a nod to his work on both sides of the camera.

Italian commentators were quick to note that the recognition is as much about Clooney’s off-screen biography as his filmography. He owns a villa on Lake Como, married human rights lawyer Amal Alamuddin in Venice in 2014, and has presented nine films at the festival, including his directorial efforts Good Night, and Good Luck and The Ides of March. In the Italian press, the award was framed as a homecoming for a star who has become a fixture of the local imagination, his arrivals chronicled as much by gossip magazines as by film critics. French coverage, meanwhile, highlighted the symmetry of a career that began with a medical drama and now earns a statuette at the world’s oldest film festival.

Barbera’s citation, quoted extensively across European and Latin American outlets, described Clooney as “a complete and charismatic artist, impassioned and original,” praising a versatility that spans war films (Three Kings, Syriana), thrillers (Michael Clayton), sophisticated comedy (Ocean’s Eleven), science fiction (Gravity, Solaris), and bittersweet drama (The Descendants, Up in the Air). The director noted that Clooney’s charisma is “built on credibility, not on image,” a line that resonated in Spanish-language coverage, where his political activism and humanitarian work were also underscored.

The festival runs from 2 to 12 September, with a jury led by Maggie Gyllenhaal. When Clooney steps onto the Lido this time, it will be without a film to promote, but with the weight of a career that has intertwined with the city’s watery light. As one Italian daily put it, the question is not whether he deserves the honour, but whether, at 65, he is still too young for a lifetime award. Clooney’s own answer, delivered with a shrug, suggests he is ready to accept the passage of time, as long as the motorboat still comes to collect him.