George Clooney doesn't give interviews often these days, but for GQ's Icon of the Year issue, the honoree spoke about how meeting and falling in love with Amal Clooney fundamentally changed
the course of his life.
"I was like, 'I'm never getting married. I'm not gonna have kids,'" he started, adding he was content with his life, career, and bachelor years after his 1993 divorce from Talia Balsam. "I'm gonna work, I've got great friends, my life is full, I'm doing well," he said 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.'"
Marriage changed him, George said, "because I'd 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.…" George and Amal, of course, welcomed twins Alexander and Ella in 2017. Three-year-old Alexander makes an appearance in the GQ interview and can "speak fluent Italian," George bragged.
Amal has spoken about how meeting George changed her life before, back in 2018 for Vogue.
“It felt like the most natural thing in the world,” she said of falling in love with George. “Before that experience, I always hoped there could be love that was overwhelming and didn’t require any weighing or decision-making.”
She said love is “the one thing in life that I think is the biggest determinant of happiness, and it’s the thing you have the least control over. Are you going to meet this person? I was 35 when I met him. It wasn’t obvious that it was going to happen for me. And I wasn’t willing or excited about the idea of getting married or having a family in the absence of that.”