George Clooney made waves in July when he called on Joe Biden to drop out of the presidential race, citing diminished capacity. For Clooney, there wasn't a choice to stay silent.

"I was raised to tell the truth and telling the truth means telling it when it's not comfortable," the actor-director and big Democratic booster tells The Associated Press. "I did what I was raised and taught to do. That's it."

There was inevitable backlash — just as there was back when he was branded a traitor for speaking out against the invasion of Iraq — but Clooney took the hits.

"Telling the truth to power or taking chances like that —we've seen it over our history," he says. "We've been here and survived these things and we will survive it."

Clooney's truth-to-power stance takes another step this spring as he makes his Broadway debut, telling the story of legendary reporter Edward R. Murrow in an adaptation of his 2005 film "Good Night, and Good Luck." Performances starts March 12.

Murrow, who died in 1965, is considered one of the architects of U.S. broadcast news and perhaps his greatest moment was opposing Sen. Joe McCarthy, who cynically created paranoia of a communist threat in the 1950s.

"This is a story about who we are at our best, when we hold our own feet to the fire, when we check and balance ourselves," says Clooney. "What's scary about now and the difference between Murrow's time is that we've now decided that truth is negotiable."

Movie versus play
In the movie version — which Clooney co-wrote with Grant Heslov — the role of Murrow went to David Strathairn and Clooney played CBS executive Fred Friendly; this time, Clooney takes up the mantle of Murrow. When he and Heslov did a reading... Read More