Fresh from the Venice Film Festival, George Clooney will appear Tuesday evening at a Barack Obama fundraiser in Geneva.

According to reports from Swiss news agency ATS, the Burn After Reading star and longtime Obama supporter hopes to increase Democratic coffers by nearly $1 million at the event, held for U.S. citizens living overseas.

According to planners, Clooney will address a cocktail reception - speaking and answering questions - of 170 U.S. citizens, who are each paying $1,000.

Hoping to score tickets? The twin events are already sold out, Adams, who also serves on Obama’s National Finance Committee, told journalists.

Clooney has known Obama personally since 2004 and campaigned for him during his Ilinois Senate run. But the actor had previously begged off campaigning for Obama during his Presidential bid, explaining to reporters that he wouldn’t want to “damage” him.

The fundraiser will be Clooney’s only active personal participation in the campaign, Adams told Geneve newspaper Le Temps. Said Adams, “I personally assured George Clooney that Geneva is a city where restraint is the norm and that he wouldn’t be assaulted by fans trying to tear the shirt off him.”

The actor will be bringing “three or four people” with him to the fundraiser, Adams said.

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Actor, activist, and United Nations ambassador … George Clooney wears many hats. But there’s one role he doesn’t have: Political consultant.

The actor is shooting down reports claiming he’s been advising presidential hopeful Barack Obama.

“I have never texted or e-mailed Senator Obama. And I’ll offer a million dollars to anyone who could prove otherwise, ” Clooney said Tuesday in a statement released by his publicist, Stan Rosenfield. “In fact, I’ve only talked to the Senator once in the last year and a half. On the phone.”

Not true, said Clooney.

“I’ve spent more time with Senator %26#91;John%26#93; McCain … than I have with Senator Obama …,” he said. “Although I support Senator Obama, I would never be dumb enough to offer policy advice to either candidate. They seem to be doing fine without me.”

George Clooney’s bella nuova has made her public debut as his date at the Venice and Deauville film festivals. And a source close to the actor says 28-year-old Sarah Larson is getting the thumbs-up from his pals.

“She’s really nice and generally liked by George’s friends,” a source close to the actor tells PEOPLE.

Clooney, 46, “couldn’t keep his hands off her” at Venice’s Hotel Cipriani, site of the afterparty for Clooney’s Michael Clayton, according to an observer.

“At one point he just leaned over and kissed her on the lips,” says one partygoer. “My God, she is stunning.” (Her $3 million worth of loaner diamonds - which the jeweler Bulgari confirmed were requested for “George Clooney’s girlfriend” - didn’t hurt, either.)

Larson, a onetime Fear Factor winner, works as a cocktail waitress at Las Vegas’s Moon nightclub in the Palms Casino Resort, where Ocean’s Thirteen had its premiere June 6. They’ve reportedly been inseperable ever since Larson flew to France with Clooney on Sept. 1 for the Deauville Film Festival. The two also dined with Clooney pal Matt Damon, his wife Luciana and five other friends at the L’Auberge de l’Abbaye restaurant in Beaumont-en-Auge.

A cozy couple, to be sure, but is it true amore? No one’s rushing to

register yet. When an artist who met with Clooney at the Hotel Cipriani

offered to do a wedding portrait, the bachelor didn’t hesitate. “Don’t say

weddings around me,” he said. “No weddings!”

• Reporting by COURTNEY RUBIN, MONIQUE JESSEN, MARK GRAY and JENNIFER GARCIA

Despite their breakup in May, Sarah Larson remains on good terms with George Clooney.

“George is a great guy, a wonderful person,” the former Fear Factor winner tells Britain’s Hello! magazine in what is billed as her first interview since she and the star split.

“I don’t regret spending time with him,” says Larson. “We still remain friends and have kept in touch. In fact, we spoke over the phone a couple of days ago.”

Not that this meant - despite early speculation - that the two were destined to waltz down the aisle. “We were never engaged,” she says.

And as for her current relationship status, though single, Larson says, “I have two men in my life right now. They’re very dark and have lots of hair and weigh 15 lbs.”

That would be her two cats, Lippy and Animal.

George Clooney and his girlfriend Sarah Larson have split up after a year of dating, a source tells PEOPLE.

The actor’s rep, Stan Rosenfield, would only say: “We do not comment on George’s personal life.”

The pair initially met in Las Vegas nearly four years ago, when Larson, a onetime Fear Factor winner, was a cocktail server at The Whiskey Bar. But it wasn’t until the pair met for the second time in June 2007 in Las Vegas that sparks flew.

Larson, 29, and Clooney, 47, made their public debut together at the Venice and Deauville film festivals last September. Later that month, the twosome were injured in a motorcycle accident.

Though there was speculation that Clooney would end his longtime bachelorhood, in March the actor shot down rumors of an engagement.

Next up for Clooney is the Coen brothers movie Burn After Reading, co-starring Brad Pitt, due out in September.

Weeks after he broke up with girlfriend Sarah Larson, George Clooney is keeping a low profile and focusing on fun in Italy, where he owns a villa on the shores of Lake Como.

Since arriving in Italy almost two weeks ago, the Ocean’s Thirteen star has been spotted speeding in a motorboat and making time for some male bonding with pals over an afternoon round of golf in the nearby town of Menaggio.

“They didn’t use a golf cart; they chose to walk around the course,” says an observer, who adds that Clooney is a regular when he’s in town.

Sarah Larson is “moving forward” after her recent split from George Clooney, a friend of the model’s tells PEOPLE.

“From what we’ve talked about she’s doing well,” Jennifer Morss, executive director of Aid for AIDS of Nevada and a friend of Larson’s, tells PEOPLE. “You just move forward. She’s a strong, very smart girl who I think will make it through pretty much anything.”

Clooney, 47, and Larson, 29, split last month after about a year of dating. Though Clooney is an international star, Morss says Larson tried not to let being in the limelight affect her.

“Your whole life changes overnight, but she maintained that down-to-earth %26#91;quality%26#93;. She as a person never changed - she would say, ‘Yes, I’m dating George, but I want to be known for Sarah.’ ”

As for Larson’s future, Morss says her friend will be just fine post-Clooney. “She’s still Sarah, and she maintained all of her relationships with friends and family. When you don’t change to go into something like that, there’s not a whole lot of change to come out of it.”

For more about the split (including Larson’s first post-breakup public appearance), pick up this week’s PEOPLE

• Reporting by BRENDA RODRIGUEZ

Thursday is the 60th anniversary of the United Nations Peacekeeping Forces, and though the work they do is far from glamorous, they’ve got one of Hollywood’s biggest names - George Clooney - wishing them a happy birthday.

“Peace is certainly more than a celebrity endorsement,” the famously self-effacing actor, who recently split from girlfriend Sarah Larson, says. “Peace is protecting civilians, overseeing

elections and disarming ex-combatants … in places others can’t or

won’t go.”

In the Peace Is Hard public-service spot, the Leatherheads star’s voice is heard over video of soldiers in the U.N. forces’

distinctive robin-egg-blue helmets carrying out peacekeeping missions all over the world.

The peacekeepers trace their roots to 1948, when the U.N. sent observers to the Middle East to watch over the armistice between Israel and Arab states. They now number 100,000 and are sent to places like Haiti, Lebanon, Congo and Liberia.
- Michael Park

Dating one of Hollywood’s biggest stars didn’t change George Clooney’s down-to-earth ex Sarah Larson, a source close to her tells PEOPLE.

“She’s a beautiful, amazing, compassionate human being who was thrown overnight into the middle of the media monster and has done an amazing job at staying true to herself and her family and friends,” the friend says.

On Wednesday sources close to the couple verified that the pair, who dated for about a year, had parted paths.

“Yes, it’s confirmed,” one source says. “They’ve split.”

Asked about the report, Clooney’s rep, Stan Rosenfield, would only say: “We do not comment on George’s personal life.”

accident in Weehawken, N.J.

Larson was the first girlfriend to accompany Clooney to the Oscars, stoking rumors of an impending engagement that Clooney quickly shot down.

No word yet on who, if anyone, Clooney will be bringing to the premiere of his next project, the Coen brothers movie Burn After Reading, co-starring pal Brad Pitt, which is due out in September.

Reporting by MARK GRAY

Renée Zellweger and George Clooney have been pals for a long time - long enough, it seems, that even wise-cracking about their personal lives comes easy.

In a new interview with the U.K. edition of Marie Claire, the pair - who costar together in the new movie Leatherheads - have a good laugh about their views on marriage.

“We’ve both been very successful at it,” Clooney joked. (He’s divorced, and Zellweger annulled her marriage to Kenny Chesney after four months).

In all seriousness, though, she thinks Clooney, 46, is a “good man,” saying: “It’s just his natural disposition … he does the right thing, it’s almost a disease with him. I know it’s shocking in this day and age that there’s no scandal. He’s just nice and he works very, very hard.”

‘One of My Dearest Friends’

Clooney, twice named PEOPLE’s Sexiest Man Alive, was similarly effusive about Zellweger, describing her as “one of my dearest friends.” As the writer and director of the 1920s football comedy Leatherheads, Clooney says he felt under pressure as well.

“When Renee commits, it greenlights a movie. So, there’s a responsibility, as the director of this film, not to screw up my friend,” Clooney said. Zellweger chimed in: “And I reminded him daily. ‘Don’t screw this up for me, man.’”

Zellweger, meanwhile, has nothing but praise for Clooney, her director and costar, although she admitted feeling the pressure when she realized her part in Leatherheads was written for her by Clooney.

“I was terrified,” she says. “I didn’t want to be the one who sucked in his movie. You’d much rather disappoint someone you’re not going to see again.”