George Clooney turns 65 today. The number is worth a second of attention - not because an older Clooney is less Clooney, but because his story is one of the rare Hollywood testimonies that life does not have to follow a screenwriter's curve. The fall after 50? Not for him.

Born in Lexington, Kentucky, the son of a journalist, Clooney spent the 80s as a shoe salesman, a tobacco picker, and a bricklayer. That should be repeated every time Hollywood sells the myth of fast-track careers. In his first 15 years he bounced around in small TV roles before he got Doctor Doug Ross on „ER". By then he was already 33 - the age at which many people have already given up.

From that point on it all worked. „From Dusk Till Dawn" with Tarantino, „Batman & Robin" (a fiasco he himself admits as a lesson), then „Out of Sight", „The Thin Red Line", and the „Ocean's" series with Steven Soderbergh that turned him into the face of collective Hollywood competence. He won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in „Syriana" in 2006. Later he became a producer with „Good Night, and Good Luck", and in 2013 he took home another Oscar as the producer of „Argo". He has nominations in six different Academy categories - an achievement shared only with Walt Disney and Alfonso Cuarón.

For the Balkans, perhaps the most interesting chapter is the private one. Until his 50s, Clooney was the definition of the Hollywood bachelor. He bet 10,000 dollars with Nicole Kidman and Michelle Pfeiffer that he would not marry or have a child before 40. He won. Then in 2013, at his villa on Lake Como, he met Amal Alamuddin, a Lebanese-British human rights lawyer. Six months later they were engaged; in September 2014 they married in Venice. In June 2017 they had twins, Ella and Alexander.

The family today lives in Provence, on the Domaine du Canadel estate, an 18th-century property bought for around 7.7 million euros. The twins are growing up trilingual - French, English, Italian - far from the lights of Los Angeles. Clooney is known for taking guests' phones away before they enter the house. He does not allow photos of the children. That is not caprice, it is a security measure - Amal's legal work, particularly her cases against the Iranian regime, carries real threats.

What can the Balkans take from this story? That postponing is not a defeat. Clooney got married at 53 and it worked. He had children at 56, and they are doing well today. Balkan culture often asks „when?" - when the wedding, when the kids, when the house. Clooney shows an alternative: do the work first, love when it comes, don't run on other people's timetables. With a net worth of 500 million dollars he is one of the most powerful actors in the industry - but it sounds more ordinary when you say he is a father to twins growing up among olive trees and French poetry.