Hollywood power couple George and Amal Clooney have a love story for the ages.
So, what's it like to be married to a Hollywood icon?
Sit back and relax, because this is the truth about George Clooney's marriage.
David Letterman was thrown off by the story of how George and Amal Clooney met, and we
were a little bit, too.
As the actor recalled on a 2015 episode of The Late Show with David Letterman, he was
at his Lake Como residence in 2013 when a friend of his asked if he could stop by with
someone — who of course turned out to be Amal.
As Letterman said years later on an episode of his Netflix series, My Next Guest Needs
No Introduction, George didn't even have to leave the house to meet his future spouse.
Clooney told Letterman:
"I got a call from my agent, who called me and said, 'I met this woman who's coming to
your house, who you're gonna marry.'"
We have no idea what the agent knew that the actor didn't, but we would hire their crystal
ball-reading services in a heartbeat.
At first, George didn't know if Amal was into him, but from the sounds of it, she most definitely
was.
In a 2018 speech congratulating her husband on his American Film Institute Life Achievement
Award Tribute, Amal had this to say,
"I met George when I was 35 and starting to become quite resigned to the idea that I was
going to be a spinster.
Then we met, started hiding out in my London flat, and very soon it felt like no matter
what happened, I would never want to be with anyone else."
Amal assumed she'd stay single forever, while George assumed he wouldn't ever get married.
Clearly, neither of those things remained true.
In 2016, the Oscar winner told Ellen DeGeneres,
"It was, I think, about six months till I actually thought I might pop the question."
George had planned out the most perfect proposal, with the ring hidden, dinner ready, and music
playing in the background, but Amal's reaction wasn't quite what he had expected.
As he explained to DeGeneres, George told Amal all the sweet things you could hope to
hear, like how he couldn't imagine spending the rest of his life with anyone else but
her.
However, Amal took ages to respond to his proposal.
You can't fault her though, because it seems she hadn't had much of an opportunity to think
about it beforehand.
George told CBS News,
"We never talked about marriage when we were dating.
And I asked her outta the blue.
[...] I was on my knee for like 20 minutes.
I finally said, 'Look, I'm gonna throw my hip out.'
We told that story to her parents, and they're like, 'There's something wrong with his hip?'"
Spoiler alert: There was nothing wrong with his hip, and the future Mrs. Clooney did eventually
accept the proposal.
Phew, that was a close one.
When you meet against the picturesque backdrop of Lake Como, where do you go from there?
You get married in the city best known for its rich history of romance, of course.
In 2014, George and Amal Clooney jetted off back to Italy — this time to Venice for
their nuptials.
There were 105 guests present, as George told Ellen DeGeneres, for the intimate affair on
September 27th of that year.
The ceremony took place at the Aman Canal Grande hotel, which the groom arrived at by
boat.
For her big day, the bride wore an off-the-shoulder, lace-embellished gown designed by Oscar de
la Renta himself.
Life certainly took the Clooneys by surprise.
Neither of them thought they would meet someone they wanted to marry, let alone someone whose
children they wanted — but that's what they found in each other.
In an interview with GQ, George had this to say about his previous stance,
"I was like, 'I'm never getting married.
I'm not gonna have kids.’
I'd never been in the position where someone else's life was infinitely more important
to me than my own.
[...] And then tack on two more individuals, who are small and have to be fed."
Those two individuals are better known as George and Amal Clooney's twin children, Alexander
and Ella, who were born in 2017 and whose parents' world now pretty much revolves around
them.
Talking to Today about being a father, the actor said,
"It's given me a sense of belonging and a sense of home and unconditional love."
Amal Clooney is a human rights lawyer who has also served in several high offices in
the United Nations.
Amal told Today in 2016,
"If you are a lawyer and you want to take on easier cases you can prosecute traffic
violations or something.
[...] But that's not what drives me.
I want to work on cases that I feel the most passionate about."
Beyond her extremely impressive day job, Amal is endlessly committed to a wide range of
worthy causes — as is George Clooney.
Amal said during her 2018 AFI speech,
"Even before I knew him, I admired George's commitment to taking up causes like exposing
corruption in Sudan before they were visible, and to taking moral stances like opposing
the war in Iraq when it was far from popular to do so."
The couple has famously supported a wide range of charities over the years; George alone
has worked with 37 different organizations, according to Look to the Stars.
When a devastating explosion rocked Beirut in 2020, the pair donated $100,000 to charities
on the ground, according to Variety.
Amal was born in the capital of Lebanon, so it's not surprising that this terrible event
was so close to the couple's hearts.
As you might expect from such a successful couple, George and Amal Clooney have done
pretty well for themselves.
According to Celebrity Net Worth, Amal is worth $50 million, while George weighs in
at a hefty $500 million.
Together, they have a combined net worth of $570 Million thanks to their many, many ventures
across a range of industries.
George is well and truly a Hollywood fixture.
Not content simply with his acting career, George is also a screenwriter, as well as
a producer and director for both film and TV.
He has won two Oscars, four Golden Globes and one Emmy, among other awards, thereby
further increasing his market value.
He was even the highest-paid actor in the world in 2018, according to Forbes.
As for Amal, her work across law and policy has been duly rewarded.
George and Amal Clooney attended Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's royal wedding in 2018,
with Amal wowing the millions of onlookers in her bright yellow Stella McCartney dress.
Shortly after the big day, a source told People that Meghan and Amal met through "a mutual
friend" and have known each other for a while.
The two women also share a lot of similar interests, according to the People source.
Additionally, when the royal couple still resided in the UK and the Clooneys were staying
in their Berkshire home, they were practically neighbors.
In 2019, George told The Daily Mail,
"We live not too far from one another and we have dinners and stuff and we're friends
with them for all the reasons that you're friends with anybody.
They're just really nice, fun, kind people, they're a very loving couple."
Now that both couples have a Southern California base — the Sussexes in Santa Barbara and
the Clooneys in Los Angeles — it's likely that they'll continue to see lots of one another.
George isn't always busy whispering sweet nothings to his wife.
Sometimes he likes to give Amal the fright of her life instead, by training their kids
to pull pranks on her.
In a December 2020 appearance on The Graham Norton Show, George told the host:
"I taught them to put Nutella in their nappy and then go upstairs and take it off, and
then pick it up and eat it."
The mischief-loving actor really likes his poop jokes, and he's pulled an equally gross
version of this prank with their son.
George told the Daily Mail,
"I'll put peanut butter on the side of his shoe and he'll go to his mother and say, 'Mamma?
Pooh-pooh?'
[...] And when I get him to do that, that's when I really get her!
Pooh-pooh works every time.
It's the universal language!"
George Clooney has two great regrets when it comes to his children: The first is teaching
them Italian, and the second is letting them pick up their mom's Britishisms.
On an appearance on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, George told the host,
"I'm desperately trying to not make them little Brits.
[...] It's not a jumper, it's a sweater.
It's not the boot, it's the trunk.
It's not the pavement, it's the sidewalk."
It's not all about their vocabulary, either — they've even got their holiday traditions
all twisted.
George told Colbert that his son insisted they leave "milk and mince pie" for Santa
instead of the more American tradition of "milk and cookies."
As for the kids' bilingualism, George and Amal thought it would be a great idea for
Ella and Alexander to know another language, but have soon realized the error of their
ways.
In December of 2020, George told Jimmy Kimmel,
"We did a really dumb thing, which is [our kids] speak fluent Italian [...] But I don't
speak Italian, my wife doesn't speak Italian, so we've really [...] armed them with a language."
“I'll say, 'Alright, go back in and clean your room before you can...' and they're like,
'eh, Papa, stanzo, eh, eh!
And I'm like, what?'"
Since the start of their relationship, George and Amal Clooney have exchanged love letters
— and they haven't let coronavirus stop them from carrying on this sweet tradition.
George told AARP,
"Even in lockdown, I'll write a letter and slip it on her desk, or she'll write a letter
and leave it under the pillow.
I'm a big believer in letters."
Letters seem to have played a huge role in making George and Amal fall for each other
in the first place.
In her 2018 speech at the American Film Institute, Amal said,
"I couldn't sleep when we were apart and I am told that I would display a particular
grin and head tilt when reading [...] the letters that he would hide in my bag.
Five years later, none of that has changed, he is the person [...] whose smile makes me
melt every time."
The pandemic has taken some adjusting for all of us, and George Clooney passed the sudden
surplus of time by getting down and dirty with the household chores.
In an interview with CBS in his Los Angeles home, George had this to say about his homelife
during COVID-19,
"It's been a while since I did, you know, 15 loads of laundry in a day and mopped floors
and, you know, all these doors over here I stained!"
As for Amal, she got her revenge for her husband's many pranks by reimagining herself as a professional
ER critic.
During a reunion with the cast in 2021, George admitted that Amal had been watching the show
during the pandemic.
Having never seen it before, she wasn't exactly convinced.
George said to his castmates,
"This has been a very, very disastrous thing for me because I forgot all of the terrible
things I'd done as Dr. Ross.
My wife keeps going, 'Is that it?
Are you done?
Season 3 — do you finally settle down with Nurse Hathaway?'
[…] It's been a disaster for my marriage."
Despite their taunts, George and Amal Clooney are seriously over the moon for one another.
During her speech at the American Film Institute, Amal told her husband,
"My love, what I have found with you is the great love that I've always hoped existed,
and seeing you with our children, Ella and Alexander, is the greatest joy in my life.
You fill our home with laughter and happiness."
But never mind all the glitz and the glamour, what's really striking about George and Amal's
marriage is that it seems so balanced and normal.
George told Today in 2021,
"We've been a team really since we met.
The most we've ever been apart is three or four days, never had a fight, which people
always get ticked off when I say.
You know, we've been married seven years.
We have a really wonderful life together."
Really, what more could you ask for?
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