The first of these films, Wes Anderson’s adaptation of Roald Dahl’s Fantastic Mr Fox, sees George in the title role – with Meryl Streep as Mrs Fox.

Up In The Air, released in January, is a romantic comedy about a businessman with a penchant for expensive business trips, and The Men Who Stare At Goats does what it says on the proverbial tin.

Inspired by journalist Jon Ronson’s non-fictional best-seller, the film follows a reporter (Ewan McGregor) who discovers a top-secret wing of the US military – the New Earth Army – a legion of Jedi-style warriors rumoured to have psychic powers, and the ability to kill a goat by staring at it.

Through a sequence of flashbacks, we see a younger-looking Clooney, as Lyn Cassady, with long hair and army uniform, being taught “psychic” skills by the programme’s arch-hippy founder Bill Django (Jeff Bridges).

Despite the film’s stellar cast – Kevin Spacey plays Cassady’s nemesis Larry Hooper – everyone just wants to talk about the goats.

“I tell you, this goat was a particularly nice goat,” George jokes. “The funny thing is, the goat was a great actor. He walked in and we were like, ‘OK, stare at the camera’ and he was like, ‘Yuhh’. If I could get Ewan to do that, it’d help.”

Growing more serious, George explains that he and Grant had been eyeing up the script for some time.

“This is a script that’s been around town for a while, all of us were aware of it for a bit and it was named one of the best un-made screenplays, so we were all sort of anxious to get our hands on it and see if there was a way we could do it – and Grant had the right ideas.

“It’s not easy to bring out a film like The Men Who Stare At Goats in the summer. It sort of gets swallowed up and it’s not easy to bring it out in February necessarily, because it’s sort of a dead zone time for films, so this is really about the right time for the film to come out.”

As for his future projects, George is back to his joking best.

“No more farm animals and no more children, that’s my new motto.”