If you’re a fan of classic movies that didn’t need nonstop action, explosions, or CGI to be successful, there’s no way you’d forget about George Clooney. The 60-year-old actor has been around since the 1970s, so there’s a good chance that many fans of the actor are well in their late 30s and mid-40s by now. With notable roles in the Ocean’s Eleven trilogy and Gravity, the actor has proven that he’s still very much a big name in Hollywood, even among the younger generation.
For a man who has been present in Hollywood for almost four decades, Clooney has definitely had his fair share of relationships while trying to find that one special person to settle down with. So, who is George Clooney’s wife?
Born on May 6th, 1961, Clooney started in television as an extra on the miniseries Centennial in 1978 before landing his first major role in the short-run series E/R, a medical sitcom exploring the happenings of the emergency room and its effect on the lives of its doctors, in 1984.
After the show ended, Clooney was everywhere in Hollywood. He ended up finding one-shot roles on Facts of Life and Golden Girls before landing a more prominent supporting role in Roseanne as Roseanne Barr’s supervisor, Booker Brooks. Around this time, he would begin to date fellow actress Kelly Preston in 1987.
After his time on Roseanne, Clooney would somehow find his way back to acting in the emergency room in the hit NBC medical drama also called ER (they really didn’t think too hard with that one, did they?) and would rise to fame as Dr. Doug Ross from 1994 to 1999. Clooney’s good looks and distinguished personality instantly made him a hit with the ladies, so it didn’t take long for his dating life to become a hot topic of conversation.
However, Clooney was already married by the time ER propelled him to superstardom. After a two-year relationship with Kelly Preston ended in 1989, Clooney would marry another fellow actress, Happy Days star Talia Balsam. The couple would be married for four years before divorcing sometime in 1993.
Afterward, Clooney would remain a bachelor for two decades and dated several high-list celebrities over time. His long list of girlfriends includes Cameron Diaz, Charlize Theron, Lucy Liu, Renee Zellweger, and former WWE star Stacy Keibler. For a while, it was starting to look like Clooney would never get married again, but that all changed in Italy.
According to Showbiz Cheat Sheet, Clooney met Amal Alamuddin at his Venice home in 2013 at the request of his agent. The Midnight Sky actor recalled the event in an interview on David Letterman’s Netflix show, My Next Guest Needs No Introduction.
“I got a call from my agent who called me and said, ‘I met this woman who’s coming over to your house who you’re gonna marry.’ The funniest thing was my mom and dad were visiting, so my parents were there, and we just talked, and we stayed up all night talking.” Clooney said. The actor added that he even chased and called her for many months afterward, clearly smitten by the 43-year-old Lebanese British lawyer.
Though Clooney is considered Hollywood royalty, Amal is pretty famous in her own right. A well-known international law and human rights attorney, Alamuddin has represented a fair share of big-name clients, including controversial WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and former Ukrainian prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko. In fact, it was their common interest in human rights that drew the actor to Alamuddin, since Clooney is an avid human rights activist himself.
The couple would eventually get married in 2014, a year after they met. They welcomed twins Ella and Alexander three years later. The Clooney family currently lives in Italy, and as the children of such great people, the twins have already begun to wow their parents.
“They really come out with their personalities that they’re born with. My daughter will be like, ‘Sit down!’ and [Alexander] will sit down. They’re just completely different personalities, and they’re fun and smart. They already can… do all their ABCs in Italian and in English, and I can’t do that – in English!” Clooney said in a 2017 interview with Today.
It may have taken a long time, but it seems Clooney has found his fairytale happy ending. And though the world has become a lot more tense since his simple days as a doctor in ER, the actor is content with all he’s gained in life.
“I’m not mad at anything. I got a brilliant, beautiful wife, I got two knuckleheads for kids, life’s great,” he said in a 2019 interview with ET.