DUBAI: George Clooney rarely does interviews these days, but the Hollywood actor made an exception for GQ’s Icon of the Year issue, lavishing praise on his wife, British-Lebanese human rights lawyer Amal Clooney.
And can you blame him? In addition to being an accomplished international human rights barrister, Amal has also represented high-profile clients such as Julian Assange, fought for thousands of Yazidi victims of persecution and served as the UK’s former envoy on press freedom before stepping down from her position in September in protest at Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s handling of the Brexit deal.
“Yeah, my wife is literally — like, today she’s in the middle of sort of standing up against the British government, you know, deciding that they’re going to break international law. So she had to retire as the envoy, and she’s in there doing that,” Clooney proudly told the publication in a feature that came out this week. “And I’m in here doing this interview.”
After his divorce from actress Talia Balsam in 1993, Clooney was perfectly content as a bachelor for many years. But after he met Amal in 2013, everything changed.
“I was like, ‘I’m never getting married. I’m not going to have kids. I’m going to work, I’ve got great friends, my life is full, I’m doing well,” he recalled of his mindset at the time. “And I didn’t know how un-full it was until I met Amal. And then everything changed. And I was like, ‘Oh, actually, this has been a huge empty space.’”
The couple married in a lavish ceremony in Venice in 2014. They had twins, a boy, Alexander, and a girl, Ella, in 2017.
The “Ocean’s Eleven” actor went on to say that marriage changed him “because I had never been in the position where someone else’s life was infinitely more important to me than my own. You know? And then tack on two more individuals, who are small and have to be fed.”
In the GQ profile, Clooney also revealed one of his reasons for stepping back from acting in recent years. “I would generally rather spend time with Amal than do anything else,” he said.
