All About George Clooney’s Wife, Amal Clooney, the Powerhouse Attorney Who “Swept Him Off His Feet”

George Clooney and his wife, Amal Clooney, are the definition of a power couple. The Ocean’s Eleven star met Amal (née Alamuddin) in 2013, when a mutual friend introduced them at the actor’s Lake Como home. After a brief email correspondence, the two began dating, and the rest is Hollywood history.

The actor famously swore he’d never remarry after his 1993 divorce from Talia Balsam. In 1995, he told Barbara Walters the reason he hesitated to return to the altar was “[b]ecause I wasn’t very good at [marriage],” as quoted by Grazia. Yet 20 years after his split from Balsam, he met the human rights lawyer who changed his mind about tying the knot again.

“The truth was I met this amazing woman and she took my breath away,” he said in a 2021 appearance on the Smartless podcast. “She was brilliant and funny and beautiful and kind. I was sort of swept off my feet. We got engaged after a few months and got married within the first year that we met,” he added.

The pair wed in September 2014. Almost three years later, they welcomed their fraternal twins: Alexander and Ella. “I have in my husband a partner who is incredibly inspirational and supportive, and we have a home filled with love and laughter,” Amal told Time in 2022. “It is a joy beyond anything I could ever have imagined. I feel so lucky to have found a great love in my life, and to be a mother—this is how I get my balance.”

Over a decade into their marriage, the Clooneys are as affectionate as ever (see their steamy Tony Awards PDA) and maintain they’ve yet to get into an argument. Here’s everything to know about George Clooney’s wife, Amal Clooney.

She was born in Lebanon and raised in England.

While Amal’s parents moved around for work—her mother, Baria Alamuddin, is a political journalist, while her father, Ramzi Alamuddin, is former VP of the Universal Federation of Travel Agents’ Association—they were in their native Lebanon when they welcomed their daughter, per Vogue. Born amidst the country’s civil war in 1978, Amal’s name is Arabic for “hope.”

Her family fled Lebanon due to the conflict when Amal was just two years old, relocating to Buckinghamshire, England. After six years at a girls’ preparatory school, the budding intellectual attended St. Hugh’s College, Oxford. There, she received the prestigious ​​Shrigley Award for excellence in law studies. Clooney would later return to her home country as an investigator for the United Nations.

She has three siblings.

According to a 2015 report by AFP, Amal has three siblings: a younger sister, Tala, and two older half-brothers, Samer and Ziad, from her father’s previous marriage. Tala Alamuddin is a fashion designer whose Singapore-based accessories brand, Totally TALA, has been featured in Elle, Vogue, Glamour, and elsewhere. Like Amal, she’s educated, having graduated from Richmond, The American International University in London, in 1995 per her LinkedIn.

Besides looking remarkably alike, Tala and Amal have a major aspect of their lives in common. “My sister Tala has twins, and they’re wonderful,” Amal told The Hollywood Reporter in 2017, not long after welcoming her own twins with Clooney. Vogue reported in 2014 that Tala’s daughter, Mia, was the flower girl in Amal and Clooney’s wedding.

While not much is publicly known about her half-brothers, Amal and her sibling Samer Alamuddin attended the Tokyo premiere of Tomorrowland together. The 2015 sci-fi flick stars her husband as a disillusioned inventor.

She’s a respected human rights lawyer.

Before she became a fixture of headlines for her relationship with an A-list actor, Amal had already made a name for herself as a powerhouse attorney. The NYU alum began her career as an investigator for the U.N. in Lebanon. Today, she works as a barrister at Doughty Street Chambers in London.

Throughout her career, the 47-year-old has made it her mission to pursue justice for those who have suffered horrific atrocities such as genocide and sexual violence. She’s represented journalists who faced imprisonment after reporting on war and corruption, as well as 800 Yazidi victims of ISIS, according to a 2024 profile.

While still a student at NYU, she completed an externship under future Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. It was there that she discovered her passion for international law. “I started to see how all my interests—in courtroom advocacy, in representing victims, in using the law to address conflict—could come together,” she told NYU Law’s alumni magazine.

20 years after graduating, Amal received the university’s Alumni Achievement Award for her commendable efforts as an attorney and activist.

She’s a mom of twins.

Amal and George welcomed their twins, Alexander and Ella, on June 6, 2017. The attorney gave birth at London’s St. Mary’s Hospital, per People. “My daughter looks exactly like Amal,” George told the outlet of his newborn daughter later that year. “She has big beautiful eyes … It’s incredible.” Vogue’s 2018 feature on Amal reported that Alexander, meanwhile, took after his famous father.

The couple didn’t discuss having kids before their marriage, and the Wolfs actor was initially indifferent to the idea. “There was an assumption that we didn’t want [kids],” he said in a 2017 Hollywood Reporter feature. “And then, after the wedding, Amal and I were talking and we just felt we’d gotten very lucky, both of us, and we should share whatever good luck we’ve got. It would seem self-centered to just have that belong to us.”

Although Amal doesn’t often discuss her family in interviews, she gave Vogue a glimpse at her life with the then-infant twins in 2018. “Between 6 and 8 in the morning [George and I] get to have them in our bed—I don’t schedule any calls before 8,” she shared of their “quality time.”

Bonding with her children, who are now 8 years old, is a priority for the working mom. When her husband was asked by The Guardian if they have a full-time nanny, he explained, “We don’t, because it’s so important to Amal [to be involved]. We have a nanny four days a week and the rest of the time it’s just us.”

She uses her platform to spotlight global issues.

Her high profile marriage thrust Amal into the spotlight, but she’s used it to highlight her work, such as the TrialWatch initiative founded by the Clooney Foundation for Justice (CFJ).

In a 2022 profile honoring her selection as one of Time’s Women of the Year, she discussed the program’s impact on human rights cases around the world. “We’re now in over 35 countries trying to be in these courtrooms where journalists, democracy-defenders, women, and minorities are unfairly targeted through the courts,” she explained. 

Alongside her husband, she founded CFJ in 2016 to “wage justice” on a global scale. The foundation offers free legal aid to women and journalists who are unfairly imprisoned or facing other human rights violations, like child marriage. “The first step is to tell the world what is actually going on,” Amal said of CFJ’s TrialWatch initiative in 2019, per the American Bar Association. “Apathy is the enemy.”