Listen carefully and you'll hear it: the sound of a gazillion dearly held romantic fantasies fizzling out in unison. Gorgeous George – he of the smouldering sexiness and crinkly-eyed charm – turns out to be human in all the most prosaic ways. It's heartwarming, it's huggable and it's one almighty erotic buzz-kill.

You can blame the Hollywood Reporter for prising open this famously press-averse heart-throb, whose reluctance to grant interviews has helped make him the closest we have to a bona fide matinee idol. Oh, that face – that body – hasn't hurt, but it was the silence in which he wrapped himself – the silence into which anything might be read – that made his allure so irresistible.

Now we know that he's just another 50-year-old bachelor, prone to all the self-absorbed insecurities that money and leisure can buy. He has aches and pains, insomnia and never feels more alone than when he's out someplace public. Except when he's stuck in a bad relationship, that is.

And in fact, guys might as well quit their daydreaming, too, because here is proof that no amount of charisma will inure you to heartbreak. You can look like Clooney – you can actually be Clooney – and still women will dump you, cheat on you, spurn your lonesome pleas for rapprochement. Even that Brat Pack thing he has going on with his buddy Brad Pitt turns out to be a mere media-fabricated bromance. Sure, they're pals, but when do their schedules allow them time to hang together?

Clooney is nominated for two Oscars this year, one for his role as a cuckolded, grieving husband and bungling dad in The Descendants, the other for co-writing The Ides of March, which he also directed. But it's not a job without downsides. An accident while shooting Syriana in 2005 resulted in a back injury that continues to pain him and since his stomach is too sensitive to handle Vicodin, it makes him downright cranky.

Lest we forget that those heroic roles from earlier on in his career were just that – acting – he also revealed that when his retinue got held up by Kalashnikov-wielding 13-year-olds on a charitable mission in Sudan, it wasn't he who cooled the situation. Nor can he sleep at night, despite being in bed by 10 o'clock, "numbing out" his angst with telly and frequently waking before dawn. It might make some reach for the Scotch, but not George. He's been teetotal since New Year's Eve.

You could say he's doing us a favour by reminding us that fame and fortune do not guarantee happiness, love or even a decent night's kip.

While Clooney's confessions further dim the sputtering lights of Hollywood, they also make him infinitely more human. The problem is, we've cast him as a star and that comes with privileges that make his life very different to ours in crucial ways. In that context, he can but sound whiny, which is pretty much the equivalent of wearing socks during sex where fantasies are concerned.

Perhaps we should consider making pinups of scientists instead. It's not that they wouldn't share Clooney's curmudgeonliness but, being too busy saving the planet, they might at least let a girl dream. Failing that, there's always Ryan Gosling.