George Clooney is opening up for the first time about how he met, fell in love and proposed to his wife Amal Clooney.
In a candid interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the 56-year-old actor and director recounted first meeting his human rights lawyer wife near Lake Como in July 2013 when she was passing through the Italian destination on her way to Cannes with a mutual friend.
“I thought she was beautiful, and I thought she was funny and obviously smart,” George said — joking that Amal “probably thought I was old.”
Though there was an attraction, romance wasn’t immediate. The two would end up talking for weeks afterwards before they would see one another again. “She sent some pictures from when she was here, and we were writing each other, emailing, talking, mostly about what was going on in each other’s lives,” George explained. “And over a period of time it became clear we were more than just friends.
In October 2013, George invited Amal to visit him in London where he was supervising the recording of the score for his 2014 directorial outing Monuments Men at Abbey Road Studios. The historic location proved to be a great location for the couple’s first official date.
“That was a good first date,” George remembered.
Not only would the evening give George time to get to know Amal better, it would also give him a chance to see how Amal would manage the onslaught of press attention in the future.
“We went for dinner,” George said. “[Amal] said, ‘Let’s go to this place.’ It was one of those places that was incredibly hip and chic. And when we came out, there were 50 paparazzi there. But she handled it like a champ.”
“Pretty quickly, things escalated once I was in London.,” George added.