George Clooney on how he uses fame to get support for underprivileged

Hollywood superstar George Clooney says he tries to fight the suffocation of fame by using it to highlight the plight of other people.

The actor, while speaking at an international forum on genocide prevention and the refugee crisis held in Armenia, said he had decided to use his fame to focus attention on those "who can't get any cameras on them at all" after reading about atrocities being committed in the Darfur region in the early 2000s, reported the Independent.

"Fame has an interesting element to it but if you tend to be followed round by a camera then you can feel suffocated at times. I thought it might be effective if I went to those places and got those cameras to follow me and try and amplify these stories of NGOs who were doing such hard work, such dangerous work," he said.

The actor-filmmaker, 54, said he felt fortunate to have been born in the US.

"I was lucky to be born where I was and not born as a young woman who was taken by Boko Haram. It was lucky - luck is genetic and time and place. That luck needs to be spread. What I find beautiful about what we're doing this weekend is we're looking at it, we're pointing at it, we're amplifying it. There is an awful lot the world needs, not a handout but a hand-up."

The forum is being held to mark the 101st anniversary of the beginning of a genocide of the Armenian people by the ruling Ottoman Empire.