George Clooney’s 5 Most Iconic Roles

George Clooney is making the festival rounds, with his political thriller The Ides of March kicking off Venice on Wednesday and the actor-director set to receive the Silver Medallion Tribute at Telluride this month.

Meanwhile, another movie he stars in — The Descendants, directed by Alexander Payne — will premiere at Telluride and close the New York Film Festival next month.

In other words, it’s going to be a busy fall for Clooney.

PHOTOS: Venice Film Festival: 10 Films to Know

Here are five of the actor’s most iconic roles:

ER: The actor got his big break playing Dr. Doug Ross on the NBC medical drama, leaving in 1999 after five seasons on the show to pursue a film career. In 2000, he surprised fans with an appearance for the last episode of Julianna Margulies, whose character, nurse Carol Hathaway, flew to Seattle for a reunion with Ross, her former lover and father to her twin girls. He also appeared in the series finale in 2009.

PHOTOS: The Scene at the 2011 Venice Film Festival

Out of Sight: Clooney received rave reviews for his performance in the 1998 movie, which co-starred Jennifer Lopez. He’s said it’s one of his favorites movies. “It was the first time where I had a say, and it was the first good screenplay I’d read where I just went, ‘That’s it,'” he has said. “Even though it didn’t do very well box-office wise — we sort of tanked again — it was a really good film.”

Ocean’s Eleven: Clooney led an A-list cast in the movie — and its two sequels — playing title character Danny Ocean, a charming thief who leads a group in the multimillion-dollar burglary of a Las Vegas casino.

VENICE FILM REVIEW: ‘The Ides of March’

Syriana: It might not be remembered as Clooney’s highest-profile role, but the movie — based loosely on former Central Intelligence Agency agent Robert Baer and his memoirs of being an agent in the Middle East — won Clooney his first and (so far) only Oscar.

STORY: Venice Film Festival Gets Underway With George Clooney’s ‘The Ides of March’

Michael Clayton: Clooney plays a corporate “fixer” brought into to fix the situation after a lawyer has a breakdown while representing a chemical company that he knows is guilty in a multibillion-dollar class action suit. His role earned him an Oscar nom.