Legendary long-time Hollywood bachelor George Clooney swore he'd never marry again.
Then Amal Alamuddin waltzed into his world and threw the actor, and everyone else in
Tinseltown, for a loop.
The couple happily tied the knot in 2014, but here's what's really going on between
these two.
"People love Amal.
She's really the selling point here.
Mmhm.
Okay."
George is no stranger to politics, and being a humanitarian, he's aligned himself with
initiatives connected to American presidents past and present.
Meanwhile, Amal is a British-Lebanese lawyer and human rights activist, often representing
high-profile clients affiliated with government entities, including controversial Wikileaks'
founder Julian Assange and former Ukranian Prime Minister, Yulia Tymoshenko.
In 2014, Amal was appointed to the UK Attorney General's international law panel.
And both George and Amal even had face time with former President Barack Obama.
The A-list actor has even hooked up with Obama privately to shoot hoops.
Sounds like these two might have some political sway behind the scenes.
"If you let me win, you'll never hear the end of it.
I'll talk a little trash about ya.
I'll make you feel bad about yourself."
George once penned an open letter, via USA Today, to dispute the Daily Mail's claims
that Amal's mother was seriously opposed to her daughter marrying the American celebrity
on religious grounds, believing that her daughter risked being quote, "cast out of [their] community"
if she went through with the wedding.
The actor wrote,
"The irresponsibility in this day and age to exploit religious differences where none
exist, is at the very least negligent, and more appropriately, dangerous.
We have family members all over the world, and the idea that someone would inflame any
part of that world for the sole reason of selling papers should be criminal."
The Daily Mail published an apology, but it wasn't the last outlet the Clooneys would
confront.
"It's every day, another story.
I think, on the cover of a magazine, Amal and I are finally getting divorced."
"Oh, already?"
"Well, we tried."
The couple took on Hello! magazine after it published a reportedly "exclusive" interview
that never really happened.
George wrote via Page Six,
"Hello! magazine has printed an 'EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW' with me that has been widely picked
up and reprinted…The problem is that I have not given an interview to Hello! magazine
and the quotes attributed to me are not accurate."
Hello! also apologized to the actor.
You'd think the man who's played devastatingly dashing roles in the movies would be a regular
Casanova in real life too.
"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."
"Now this was arranged by an agent?
Your talent agent."
But according to George, his proposal to Amal was downright cringeworthy.
He told Ellen his romantic dinner moment didn't go off as planned, saying,
"[Amal] gets up to go wash the dishes, which she's never done…[She] comes back in, and
finally I said, 'You know, I blew out the candle' and I said, 'I think the lighter's
in the box behind you.'
And she reaches around and she pulls out the box…and she looks at it and she's like,
'It's a ring', like as if somebody had left it there some other time."
Clooney finally dropped down to one knee, claiming it took Amal about 25 minutes to
answer the big question.
He said to his future wife,
"Look, I hope the answer is yes, but I need an answer, I'm 52 and I could throw out my
hip pretty soon."
George seems to have settled into married life, which might be a little surprising given
his once outspoken views on marriage and bachelorhood.
"I know I'm never gonna get married again because I wasn't very good at it."
He told Esquire in 2014,
"I was married in 1989.
I wasn't very good at it.
I was quoted as saying 'I'll never get married again' pretty much right after I got divorced,
and then I've never talked about it since."
Yet, after marrying Amal, George made it clear that he's better off now than he was flying
solo, telling Peter Travers in 2015,
"I'm a happier person...We are very happy, we have a very happy life."
As an international human rights lawyer, Amal advocates for clients who've been assaulted
by terrorist organizations.
And one of these groups is ISIS.
"I believe in international justice, I believe it's important that you don't just turn the
page without people being held to account."
Given the gravity of her work, it's no surprise that security has been an issue for herself
and her family.
George told The Hollywood Reporter's Awards Chatter podcast,
"Everything changes when you have two kids on how you have to protect them."
As Amal took ISIS to court, George revealed of his family,
"We have plenty of issues, real, proper security issues, that we have to deal with on a fairly
daily basis."
We're certainly hoping the Clooneys remain safe throughout the trial.
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