“He’s twice the size she is. He’s a moose and she’s just this little tiny beautiful thing.” This is how George Clooney describes his children, Alexander and Ella. The proud dad shows pictures of the twin babies to the reporters during interviews at the Toronto Film Festival. “She’s very delicate and feminine, and she’s all eyes and looks like her mother.”
In an atmosphere of jokes and candid revelations, Clooney opens up all about what is like to become a father at his age. “Hey, remember back when you were single, before you didn’t have to worry about keeping people alive?” he laughs. Then, in a sincere and tender tone he talks about the new borns: “They don’t cry. I cry more than they do. I cry four times a day right now, because I’m so tired.”
Godfather to about 20 children of his friends, Clooney says he was not completely unaware about how life would change. “I knew what I was in for. The surprise for me was how much more complicated twins is than just the one — it’s not just twice as much work, it’s more than that. And it’s not even so much work for me, because these two knuckleheads don’t even care that I exist right now!”
“And I have such admiration for my wife because she’s breastfeeding them and getting about two hours of sleep per interval, and the love they have for her is a sight to see and it’s beautiful.”
And what would George Clooney like to teach his children? A lesson from ten years when he was simply a “struggling actor”: “It’s challenging to remind children who have been born into this glass of celebrity and money to have empathy for people who aren’t as fortunate as they are. That’s going to be Amal’s and my job to teach our children, and it’s an important one.”
Despite the current exhaustion and the shadows below his eyes, the actor acknowledge it is worthy. “All of this is icing on the cake. Look, I’m 56 years old and I didn’t think it was going to happen for me.” Clooney acknowledge it was the love for Amal that changed his mind. “I thought my life would be focused on my career, not relationships,” he reveals. “And then I met Amal and I thought, “Well, I have this incredible relationship, this is wonderful.” And then… all of a sudden we have these two knuckleheads around who make me laugh every day.”
And he concludes, “All I know is that I am at last experiencing what most people in the world get to experience, which is the incredible amount of love you gain when you have two children you are responsible for”.
