George and Amal Clooney: Eyes only for each other, hearts for the world
They have eyes only for each other—he twirls her long, dark hair while she’s talking and looks mesmerized as she does. She’s adoring of him and though almost his height in her heels, she obviously looks up to him like she would the Eiffel Tower on a moonless night.
And yet Hollywood A-lister George Clooney, and his wife, human rights lawyer Amal Alamuddin Clooney, have hearts that bleed for the world.
At the Social Good Summit organized by news online platform Rappler at the Lanson Hotel last Sunday, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Ressa asked why they do what they do.
George took to the mic first for this question.
“I would be ashamed to look my children in the eye if we didn’t stand for the things we believe in. Even when it’s difficult. And if that makes things difficult at times, things get difficult at times…I’m not at risk of going to jail that I know of. Maybe after today, I probably am. Amal and I talk about this a lot. We would be ashamed if we at any point didn’t take on the things that we believe in because we were afraid. My father (journalist Nick Clooney) always said, ‘I don’t care what you do in life. Just defend people with less power than you and challenge people with more power than you.’ And that’s it,” said the Hollywood star, whose accolades include two Academy awards (one for best supporting actor in Syriana, and another for co-producing Argo)
Amal, looking both stunning and purposeful in a red knit ensemble, added, “We imagine our kids learning about what’s happening in the world and asking us later, what did you do when journalists were being put in prison? What did you do when women were being bought and sold and had their bodies used as battlefield? What did you do when minorities were being mistreated, and you could (do something)?
“You know we have a public platform,” the British barrister of Lebanese descent pointed out. “I have my profession that can be used to say something and hopefully do something constructive. Imagining that conversation with our kids, and imagining your life at the end of it, looking backwards and your kids or your grandkids asking you, what did you do? What impact did you have? Did you leave things a bit better than how you found them?
“I hope that we’ll have a good answer,” she concluded.
The couple founded the Clooney Foundation for Justice in 2016, and it operates in more than 40 countries.
‘Just roll the ball up’
What do you do when things look hopeless, Maria asked them both in the open forum.
“The truth of the matter is, most of the time we fail,” George said. “We fail trying to move that ball up the hill in terms of government—you know I’m old enough to have grown up through the civil rights movement and the women’s rights movement, the anti-Vietnam. Those were all in the ‘60s. That was my growing up. Sometimes we succeeded. Sometimes it took 20 years. We fall backwards. History does not move in a straight line…So, the world, that’s how it is.”
But the 64-year-old father of two is optimistic. “Overall, we are still moving much of the time in good directions. Even when it feels terrible right now, there are more dictatorships right now than in a long time. We’re going to get through these things, and the truth of the matter is, what are you supposed to do? Are you going to not keep rolling that ball up the hill? I mean, failing is not the end. You’re going to fail and you’re going to fail and you’re going to fail. And if it’s not you, somebody else behind you is going to keep pushing that and somewhere along the way you’re going to succeed.
“And you get to stand on the shoulders of people. I stand on the shoulders of people who did it before me and they stand on our shoulders. And you just keep pushing it up and most of the time get used to failing. That’s okay. Because every once in a while, you know, you get to look around and see somebody move that ball all the way up.”
“We’ll get through it,” he said confidently.
In her speech at the opening of the summit, which she began by saying “Kamusta?” Amal said she has hope, “Because of the many brilliant lawyers and academics here who have I had the privilege of meeting and working with. I have hope because more than one in three Filipinos today is under 25, and young people have shown they are unafraid to denounce what is wrong. Because Maria and her colleagues continue to report the truth and hold the line for all journalists despite the threats. And because the Philippines is one of the very few legal systems in the world that provides protections for speech as robust as those set out in the First Amendment to the US Constitution, even adopting the standard in its most famous case, New York Times vs. Sullivan.
“But ultimately, countries must be judged not by what they say, but what they do,” Amal stressed.
“So, in my meeting with President Marcos, I highlighted concrete steps that this government can take to protect journalists, in line with the commitment he has expressed to advance the rule of law.”
Amal is part of the legal team defending Maria, who she said in 2019 (during the Duterte administration) was “being persecuted for reporting the news and standing up to human rights abuse.”
‘Don’t make me cry onstage’
Maria then asked the couple what they had learned from each other.
“I met and married the smartest, most beautiful, but also the most dedicated human being I’ve ever met,” George gushed.
“Don’t make me cry on stage,” Amal said, her voice breaking a teeny-weeny bit.
“She makes every room a little smarter and a little better,” said George, who married Amal in a dream wedding in Venice in 2014. They both first met in Italy and he reportedly finds Venice the most romantic city in the world. “What have I learned from her? I’ve learned about integrity. I’ve learned about compassion. I’ve learned about all those elements that make us better as humans. That’s what I learned from my wife.”
OMG! Oh my George, is this guy for real?
Amal responded, “I’ve learned what courage looks like when I watch you. And eloquence and humor. I’ve seen what an amazing father looks like and many, many things. George is the best communicator I know, and if he’s standing up to make a speech, he can make you laugh, and he can make you cry, and he can also convince. And so in that sense, it’s the same job that we’re both trying to do, which is advocacy for change and hopefully moving the needle in the right direction whenever we can. So I’ve learned a lot from him.”
“I was also the two-time sexiest man alive. Not one, two times,” George interjects. (People Magazine named George the “Sexiest Man Alive” in 1997 and 2006.)
“It should be three,” his wife says breathlessly.
Power, purpose, passion with romance and humor thrown into the alchemy. To all couples with one or two ingredients in the mix missing, how to be them, indeed?
