Clooney taken aback

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George Clooney

George Clooney can't believe Americans are still fighting a race war after witnessing segregation first-hand as a child.

The Ocean's Eleven star grew up in Kentucky in the 1960s, and never imagined he would ever again witness the hate spewed by white supremacists at the height of the civil rights movement.

Clooney has been disappointed by the rise in the alt-right in recent times, especially following the election of Donald Trump as President last year.

The actor/director, who recently made a $1 million donation with his wife Amal to tackle hate groups, is particularly incensed by the actions of those who marched in the violent white supremacy rally in Charlottesville, Virginia last month, because neo-Nazis do not represent the views of the majority of his fellow Americans.

"When you see those idiots (in Charlottesville) carrying torches and stuff - those chickens**t little p**sies walking around with their stupid little Tiki torches - they don't represent one per cent of this country, and that's the truth," he declared to Deadline.com. "And so, we have to fight against it and stand up against it, but we have to remember that they don't represent enough to spend that much time thinking about them."

The issue of race relations is one Clooney addresses in his new movie, Suburbicon, as it is inspired by the real-life uproar sparked by a black family moving into a white neighborhood in Levittown, Pennsylvania, in 1957.

The movie premiered at the Venice Film Festival in Italy earlier this month, and its release couldn't be more timely - although Clooney insists it wasn't planned that way.

"It wasn't designed to be that," he said. "You don't have to be a soothsayer to realise we're going to constantly have to deal with these issues; they continually pop up. It's too bad we're still fighting these fights. I didn't think we would, growing up in the '60s in the South. I thought after segregation was gone we were going to really move forward, and we didn't, really. We stalled. We've got a lot of work to do."