Movie star George Clooney said on Friday that US President Donald Trump’s threat to impose a 100% tariff on all films produced overseas was the wrong solution for a real issue.

Clooney spoke before the annual Albies awards ceremony in London, a programme that he and his wife Amal created to recognise global human rights defenders.

He said that Trump’s take that movie industry jobs were leaving California was true, but that it’s “because we don’t have proper tax incentives or rebates like you do in New York”.

George Clooney said that if Trump “wants to implement a federal incentive, that would match the kinds of incentives we get in Louisiana and New Jersey and New York, then I think that would make a big difference in helping out”.

Among the honorees at the Albies were Melinda French Gates, the ex-wife of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, for her decades of efforts to champion women’s health and gender equality, along with Marty Baron, the former editor of the Washington Post and the Boston Globe for his media leadership, and Darren Walker, president of the Ford Foundation, who created a billion-dollar social bond in US capital markets to stabilise non-profits during the Covid pandemic.

Two other honorees were Fatou Baldeh, a leading global voice on the dangers of female genital mutilation, and Jose Ruben Zamora, a Guatemalan journalist who has spent three decades investigating corruption.