BY GEORGE

The Golden Globe he got for the Coen Brothers’ O Brother, Where Art Thou? seems to have sent George Clooney into overdrive, even making due allowance for the fact that everyone is trying to pack in as many roles before the June 30 actors-and-writers strike deadline. Clooney - who not so long ago you had to refer to as ‘Best known for his role in ER ’- is lined up for at least three major roles in the not-too-distant future.

Currently at work with Steven Soderbergh on Ocean’s Eleven, he may follow that with the title role in Alan Parker’s new movie, The Life of David Gale, in which he would play a college professor and lifelong opponent of capital punishment who suddenly finds himself on Death Row. Nicolas Cage may also take a small role, since his production company Saturn Pictures - whose first outing was Shadow of the Vampire - will be involved in the movie.

Further down the track for Clooney, meanwhile, is another collaboration with Soderbergh (his third, after Ocean’s Eleven and Out of Sight). It’s called The Good German and is a romance set in Berlin just after the end of World War II. That Clooney and Soderbergh should be working together so frequently is not all that surprising given that they co-own a production company, Section Eight, which is involved in Ocean’s, as well as in director Christopher Nolan’s remake of the Norwegian thriller, Insomnia.

Finally, Clooney looks like being back on board Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, with Johnny Depp and director Bryan Singer. When we last reported on that project (based around US TV legend The Gong Show), all of them were still in. Then the pre-strike logjam pushed them out again because of other commitments (notably the aforementioned Ocean’s Eleven). Finally, the last stages of financing the movie couldn’t be completed in time for a March 1 start, so it has now been pushed back to after the strike (or later this year, if the strike is averted). Which means that the original team could again be available.

Also looking pretty busy these days is Aussie director Bruce Beresford, last featured on these pages when he directed Double Jeopardy.

The 61-year-old film-maker has just completed Bride of the Wind, starring Vincent Perez, and is about to start Boswell for the Defence, a stage adaptation starring Michael Caine. After that will come Miss Potter, which has nothing to do with Harry but is, rather, a biopic about Britain’s most famous children’s author, Beatrix Potter.

But the big project - which Beresford is slated to make after those two have been completed - will be an epic love story set against the colonisation of his native country. The film is provisionally entitled Mary of Botany Bay, and is likely to star another, much younger Aussie who has gone on to make his mark in Hollywood: Heath Ledger. It will be a Warners movie.