When asked whether he could remember the moment when he turned the corner to fame, Clooney recalled, "I was walking through the streets of New York half way through the first season of ER, and I'd been on a lot of TV shows so people would kind of recognize me, 'It's that guy from that thing,' And I remember walking down the streets in Manhattan and them going, 'Hey George,' and they knew your name as opposed to your character.

"I remember that was a moment where I thought, 'Things have changed.' "

He added that there was no turning back from that point on, "Nobody wants to hear anybody complain, so I don't do it. I don't believe in it. But it did become very different, more complicated."

He said ER's popularity cannot be overestimated, "People talk about numbers when you talk about American Idol or whatever the big one is -- 16, 17 million people. We were averaging 40 million people at 10 o'clock at night with an hour show. That made a huge difference in my career. It really changed things."

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