Amal Clooney has opened up about the early days of her relationship with husband George, admitting she never could have predicted the impact his arrival into her life would have.
Before marrying the actor in 2014, Amal (née Alamuddin) was world renowned in legal circles, living and working as a human rights barrister in London and working on high profile cases like representing three Al Jazeera journalists convicted of terrorism in Egypt. And she had no intention of settling in her personal life.
She says she fell for the Ocean’s Eleven after their first date, agreeing to it after several weeks of email exchanges in which he wooed her by writing to her as her dog Einstein. After their lunch date, she describes their relationship as “the most natural thing in the world.”
“Before that experience, I always hoped there could be love that was overwhelming and didn’t require any weighing or decision-making. [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.”
“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,” she tells the new issue of Vogue.
George, who famously said he would never marry again after his four-year marriage to Talia Balsam ended in 1993, is full of nothing but praise for his wife and often speaks at his pride and awe at her accomplishments, in particular how she mothers their 10-month-old twins Ella and Alexander.
“If you know anything about my crazy life, you know that I’d pretty much committed to the idea of never marrying again. But I started dating Amal, and I immediately knew that something was very different,” he said.
The Oscar-winner said he was “taken” with Amal when they first met (by chance when she was with his agent near his Lake Como, Italy home).
“Of course she was beautiful. But I also thought she was fascinating, and I thought she was brilliant. Her life was incredibly exciting – the clients she was taking on and the superhuman work that she was doing. I was taken with her from the moment I saw her,” he told the magazine.
“She’s the professional, and I’m the amateur. I get to see someone at the absolute top of their game doing their job better than anybody I’ve ever seen.”