Who better to cover our latest issue – featuring a collection of first-person accounts of breakthrough moments and creative epiphanies told by everyone from Martha Stewart to President Obama’s former speechwriter Jon Favreau – than a mid-1980s pre-fame George Clooney?
Clooney starred as a male-prostitute drug-dealer in a play called Vicious, about the Sex Pistols’ Sid Vicious (“I was the comedy relief, believe it or not,” Clooney tells the magazine), and landed an agent from the role. This photo is of that era and, as literary editor David Wallace-Wells puts it: “a kind of lovable way to signal that the whole thing is about humble beginnings.”
Of his experience in the play, Clooney says: “I always look back at that play as the turning point for me. That was the first time I really felt like, Okay, I’m in the right business. I shouldn’t be embarrassed about everything I do.”