Two weeks after the Washington Post offered a critical look at the marriage of George and Amal Clooney, by reporting that the actor called the White House on his wife’s behalf to defend her role in the war crimes prosecution of Israeli leaders, an entertainment tabloid is raising questions about the health the marriage.
A report by In Touch Weekly said that the actor and his human rights lawyer wife have had trouble sticking to a vow they made when they married in 2014.
Clooney had said that they wouldn’t spend more than “a week apart,” In Touch reported. In 2021, after they became parents to twins, now 7, Clooney declared that family comes first. He said he realized, after he turned 60, that “I don’t have to act.” He also said that he and Amal talked about safeguarding against booking “ourselves silly.”
But sources tell In Touch that the Clooneys are essentially leading separate lives because they both continue to be workaholics whose very different jobs take them on extended stays to different parts of the world.
Their marriage also has been challenged by “security concerns” related to Amal’s recent, controversial work for the International Criminal Court, as well as George’s desire to speak out on political issues, including the 2024 presidential campaign.
“They seem like the picture of bliss on the red carpet, and of course they always gush about each other in public, but friends are wondering if they’ll make it. A lot of Hollywood couples don’t,” a source told In Touch.
“They are in two very different worlds 90 percent of the (time),” the source said. “They’re leading separate lives.”
George Clooney is soon to relocate to New York City for about a year, where he is set to make his Broadway debut, In Touch said. He’s writing and starring in a stage adaption of his 2005 film about journalist Edward R. Murrow, with the play expected to open in the spring of 2025, the Hollywood Reporter said.
It’s possible that Amal Clooney will join him in New York — she’s an adjunct law professor at Columbia University. But she’ll still be expected to travel to Europe for her legal work, including with the International Criminal Court, which is based in The Hague.
Meanwhile, Clooney has plunged back into acting and making movies, including the recent “Boys in the Boat,” the upcoming “Wolfs” with Brad Pitt and an Adam Sandler project that they filmed in Italy earlier this year, In Touch said.
The couple’s separate work commitments means they’ve been spending less and less time at their villa in Italy’s Lake Como, which is the closet thing they have to a family home, according to In Touch. And, even when they’re at their villa, work is never far from their minds, a source told the publication.
“Neither of them thinks twice about putting in 18-hour days on projects they’re passionate about,” the source said, adding that George Clooney has a state-of- the-art production facility at the home. “The only time they really have to ‘overlap’ is when they’re on vacation.”
Amal Clooney revealed in May that she spent the past four months working with a panel of U.K.-based international law experts to review evidence for the International Criminal Court on alleged war crimes committed during Hamas’ Oct. 7 terrorist attacks on Israel and Israel’s military response in Gaza.
Clooney and the other panelists gave their support to the ICC’s chief prosecutor, Karim A. A. Khan, in seeking arrest warrants, not just against Hamas leaders, but also against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
President Biden joined Israel in denouncing ICC’s move to seek arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant, the Washington Post reported. He called the move “outrageous” and suggested that it placed the leaders of a democratic nation, responding to a brutal terrorist attack, on an equal footing with the organization that launched the attack and whose goal is to eradicate that nation.
“Let me be clear: whatever this prosecutor might imply, there is no equivalence — none — between Israel and Hamas,” the president said in a statement. “We will always stand with Israel against threats to its security.”
Biden’s statement prompted a call from Clooney to the White House, as the Washington Post reported. Clooney is a longtime supporter of Democratic candidates and causes, donated $500,000 to Biden’s 2016 presidential campaign and is expected to headline star-studded June 15 fundraiser on behalf of the president’s re-election.
Clooney called Steve Ricchetti, counselor to the president, to complain about the president criticizing the ICC work his wife was involved in, the Washington Post reported. The Oscar winner also raised concerns about Congress passing legislation to impose sanctions on the ICC, “upset’” that his wife could be subject to penalties.
But whatever differences Clooney has with Biden over the ICC’s work, the actor is still expected to attend the fundraiser, the Washington Post reported.
Meanwhile, the looming 10th anniversary of George and Amal Clooney’s marriage has prompted the couple to try “to make more of an effort to spend quality time together,” the In Touch source said. But even if they can both commit to being in New York City for the next year, Amal will “still be traveling a lot, and (George) won’t be able to get away as easily,” the source said.
“So unfortunately they’ll just be leading separate lives again,” the source said.