Disregarding bitter criticisms from fans, George Clooney still marvels over his wife Amal Clooney, the magical and stunning woman who clinched his interest and changed his bachelor status.
“Everything about my wife is sort of magical, as I think everybody has come to realize as they see her and hear her and hear what she stands for.” The screen-savvy Clooney said to Entertainment Tonight in 2022. “There’s just not a downside to her.”
George Clooney, a consummate actor, and filmmaker are known for numerous roles in television and film. Some might remember the Hollywood heartthrob as a young handyman in the popular sitcom, The Facts of Life, which ran from 1979-1988. In the more recent past, he can be seen in TV’s ER, and as a leading man in movies like O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), Ocean’s Eleven (2001), and Ticket to Paradise (2022).
When he met the then-Amal Alamuddin 2013, a stunning Lebanese-British human rights lawyer, he landed his biggest role as a life partner.
Within only six months of their first date, the pair’s sweeping love story continued with a proposal in 2014.
Clooney, now 61, said of that moment, “Literally, I dropped it on her, and she just kept saying, ‘Oh, my God,’ and ‘Wow!’ We just sat there, and finally I said, ‘Listen, I’m 52, and I’ve been on my knee now for about 28 minutes, so I have to get an answer out of this or I’m going to throw a hip out. I might not be able to stand back up!”
In September 2014, the couple was married at the luxurious Aman Canal Grande hotel in Venice, Italy, with a star-studded guest list that included Bono, Matt Damon, and Bill Murray.
Tossed into the spotlight the moment she started dating Clooney, Amal became vulnerable to the unfiltered critiques of online trolls.
Amal, now 45, is an internationally renowned lawyer with clients that include WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, and Yulia Tymoshenko, the former prime minister of Ukraine who supported her country’s integration into the European Union. In 2019, she also represented the United Nations.
Overlooking her successes in favor of her fashion and physique, social media users lashed out at the beauty, calling her “ugly” and a “gawky gargoyle.”
“I am completely baffled at the fact that when George Clooney finally decides to settle down he picks Amal Clooney, who looks like an ugly man,” one Twitter user wrote in January 2015.
In September of the same year, ELLE Magazine posted a link on Twitter to the article 54 Times Amal Clooney Looked Just Stunning. Readers chimed in.
One person said, “She’s lovely but she has sticky icky skinny legs, shapeless sticks,” while another wrote “So so thin too thin boney old thing.”
Meanwhile, another defended the lawyer and added, “Amal Clooney is an intelligent & accomplished lawyer!! Who cares what she wears!!”
And in one case, Amal’s accomplishments were completely ignored by a major news outlet.
In 2015, the Associated Press was blasted for referring to Amal–who at the time was representing Egyptian-Canadian journalist Mohamed Fahmy–as an “actor’s wife.”
The Tweet read, “Amal Clooney, actor’s wife, representing Al-Jazeera journalist accused in Egypt of ties to extremists.”
People fired back at AP, driving the news outlet to revise the Tweet to, “Human rights lawyer Amal Clooney criticizes prison terms handed down to three Al-Jazeera English journalists.”
Responding on BBC through Entertainment Tonight, Amal tactfully said, “There’s not much I can do to control it except keep going. When people criticize journalism that focuses on the wrong issues, that’s heartening and that shows that people expect more from their press.