There are many positive words to describe George Clooney – handsome, charming, successful and good-looking, to name a few. You might think it hard to associate him with the words – bullied, idiot or nerdy but the truth of the fact is, People’s Magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive, was all that.

At 8 years of age, young George was diagnosed with dyslexia. He also had poor vision and had to wear glasses.

“I would go to one school and I was the idiot,” remarks Clooney.

If that wasn’t enough to attract bullying or constant ridicule from other kids; at age 13, on his first year of high school, he developed Bells Palsy that caused paralysis to half of his face that lasted for a year. It could not have come at a worse time for a young teenager.

Clooney, however learned to shrug off all of the constant teasing and ridicule and chose to move forward and learned how to quickly make jokes about himself first to combat the negative remarks. This way he could obliterate the opportunity for other kids to make fun of him.

Not long after this, classmates would remember Clooney as “outgoing, committed to having fun, and possessing a skill for defusing a tension-filled situation with charm and humour.”

Despite his dyslexia, Clooney did well in school with some A’s and B’s on his report cards. He also excelled in baseball.

It doesn’t take a genius to see that with the right attitude and outlook on life, a dyslexic person would not be defined by his weaknesses but instead his strengths.