The couple are seen with their baby twins Alexander and Ella at the Venice Film Festival
On a bright morning at the Toronto Film Festival, George Clooney — in town to promote the new film Suburbicon, his first directorial effort since the ill-fated The Monuments Men in 2014 — has made it all of a yard into the Ritz Carlton Hotel room before he is showing baby photographs.
‘Get a load of this!’ he urges, beaming from ear to ear as he thrusts his mobile phone into my face.
He is thinner than he was and has new-dad shadows under his eyes. But the source of his joy is immediately apparent in the two ridiculously adorable three-month-olds in the picture — a big, bonny boy chuckling mischievously into his open fist and a serene little girl with enormous doe eyes.
‘You can tell the boy from the girl, right?’ he chortles, looking fondly at the picture: it is the first time he has been separated from the two babies since they were born. ‘He’s twice the size she is. He’s a moose and she’s just this little tiny beautiful thing. They’re back in LA right now, and their mom sent these pictures this morning.’
Ever the professional film-maker, he squints at the shot. ‘She takes a good picture,’ he nods in quiet approval.
The twins certainly look a happy pair. ‘They don’t cry,’ he says, proudly. ‘I cry more than they do. I cry four times a day right now, because I’m so tired.
Hey, remember back when you were single, before you didn’t have to worry about keeping people alive?’
George and his wife Amal 42nd Annual Cesar Film Awards, Paris, in February (left). George at the Toronto Film Festival (right)
He sighs, trying, not especially successfully, to affect wistfulness for the time before his family came along. ‘Wasn’t that great?’ he asks.
He is joking, of course, with the nostalgia act. But later, over a cup of coffee, he agrees that since June 6 this year, when he and his wife Amal, 39, were joined by babies Alexander and Ella, his life has changed in ways he could not have predicted.
‘Although I wasn’t completely unaware of what life would be like,’ he puts in. ‘All my friends have kids and I’m godfather to about 20 of them, so 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!
‘All they want to do is eat, so I have nothing to give them except a bottle once in a while (expertly, he crooks his elbow to mimic picking up and feeding an infant) and they’re happy about that, but it’s mostly Amal for them at the moment. I don’t even really understand what’s going on.
‘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.’
George Clooney and Amal Clooney walk the red carpet ahead of the ‘Suburbicon’ screening during the 74th Venice Film Festival earlier this month
The other side of the sleepless nights is pure joy. ‘All of this is icing on the cake,’ he says. ‘Look, I’m 56 years old and I didn’t think it was going to happen for me. I thought my life would be focused on my career, not relationships, and I’d sort of accepted that.
‘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.
‘Really, they’re funny kids. He just eats and eats and sits and goes “uh-uh” and I have never seen anything eat so much in my life.
‘And she’s very delicate and feminine, and she’s all eyes and looks like her mother.
‘I suppose it makes sense that they should be so different, but I hadn’t seen it first hand before and it really makes you realise how much nature is part of who we are.
‘Look, today is the first time since they’ve been born that I’ve been away from them, and my wife’s sending me pictures and I’m sitting here thinking, “God, I wish I was with my kids” — and that’s fun.’
He is not, of course, a young father. ‘I feel like Tony Randall!’ he jokes (of the late U.S. actor who became a first-time father aged 77).
‘Is there a perfect age to become a parent? Look, I left it so late that I’m the last person to talk to about child-raising because I’m no expert. All I can do is play catch-up and hope I’m not on a walker when I’m chasing my grown kids around!’
Amal and George arrive at the world premiere of Hail, Caesar! in Los Angeles
The idea of George with a Zimmer frame is hard to contemplate.
‘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.’
He is also, beneath the jokes, thinking hard about the values with which he will raise the pair.
‘I have always felt a great sense of responsibility to other people in the world, but when you have children of your own, you realise you are responsible for their lives in a way you haven’t been before.
‘And you become conscious that you want to make an example of your own life that they will follow.
‘I want to make sure my children understand they have been given things other children haven’t been by accident of birth.
‘They could just as easily have been born in Syria and their lives would have been completely different.
‘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.’
Although his own father was a television presenter in Kentucky and his beloved Aunt Rosemary was a famous singer, he was certainly not born with a silver spoon in his mouth and says firmly that he never intends to forget that.
‘I grew up in Kentucky, I was a struggling actor for ten years and I have a great understanding of what it’s like to try to make things work.
‘I would buy suits that were too long in the leg, cut the bottoms off and hem them up with a stapler, and use the leftover fabric to make ties for work. I worked cutting tobacco in the fields for three dollars and thirty cents an hour.
‘I sold insurance door to door — cold calls, knock knock, “Hi, do you have whole life insurance? We can turn whole life into term life and you can put the rest of your money into your retirement fund!” Believe me, it’s a terrible job.’
During the Costume Institute Gala Benefit celebrating China: Through the Looking Glass, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
But it wasn’t the worst job. At 18, he worked in a large shop in Cincinnati where, he claims, some customers had had surgery to remove a toe so they could fit into tight shoes.
‘I worked at a ladies’ shoe store and, oh, man, there were some terrible shoes I sold. This was 1979, 1980 and there was a whole generation of older women in that part of America who had had their fourth toe cut off so they could wear these really narrow pumps.
‘Every time you saw a 75-year-old lady coming in, you’d all go “You take her!” because you’d have to look at that foot with the toe cut off and yech! Holy s***. So I know how lucky I am to have gotten to where I’ve gotten to in life.’
And the downside of fame? Don’t get him started.
‘I remember when I was looking for a job and couldn’t afford to go to the dentist because I didn’t have insurance, watching Lifestyles Of The Rich And Famous — remember that TV show?
‘Well, I remember watching it and seeing some schmuck actor talking about how tough their life was, and going, “F*** you, your life isn’t so tough!”
‘So if you ask me what my life is like now, answering the question is tricky because I could tell you the truth, which is that I miss walking in Central Park with my wife and my kids — I would like to do that but I can’t.
The pair attending The 100 LIVES initiative, to express gratitude to the individuals and institutions whose heroic actions saved Armenian lives during the Genocide 100 years ago
‘I miss certain elements of privacy that I won’t experience again.
‘But it’s not worth complaining about because I am at least aware enough of what it’s like on the other side, that I know how much more difficult it is for everyone else.’
As for Amal, he says she is handling her new life as she handles most things — with grace and a healthy dollop of humour.
‘It’s funny because she’s such a professional and so elegant and she doesn’t really do interviews, so people tend to tiptoe around her a lot — but once they start talking to her, everybody realises she is actually a very funny person.
‘We’re doing very well — and our romantic life is very good, thank you for asking. We just have to sneak around a little these days!’
Some of that sneaking around is done at their newly refurbished home in Sonning, Berkshire.
‘When we’re in England we go to the pub once a week — The Bull, it’s a cool pub. It’s really old and the doorways hit you low because people were shorter then, which is dangerous when you’ve been drinking!
‘I love it, although you have to walk through a cemetery to get there… it’s creepy but fantastic.’
At the ‘Our Brand is Crisis’ film premiere, Los Angeles, America
Meanwhile, back in Kentucky the new grandparents could not be more delighted. ‘We’ve just been to visit them. My father hadn’t seen the babies because he had a bout of pneumonia and didn’t want to fly, so we wanted to go there and spend some time with him and my mom.
‘They are thrilled about the whole thing, and also think it’s hysterical because they see everything I’m about to go through and they know what it’s about! But they love it because they get to be grandparents again — my sister has two kids and they love being grandparents.
‘They have an Iraqi refugee staying with them — I don’t want to name him because he has family in Iraq and they are still in some danger from ISIS.
‘But he’s a smart kid who has got into the University of Chicago and he’s going to start there in the fall. In the meantime, he’s my father’s best friend because he thinks all my father’s jokes are new! My Dad tells jokes I’ve heard all my life, and he is laughing and I’m thinking, “Oh my God, this kid is perfect — he’s the son my father always wanted!”’
Suburbicon, the new film George is directing, is a pitch-black comedy written by his friends the Coen brothers. It details the downfall of a middle-class white family in Fifties America, against a backdrop of racial unrest — an atmosphere George says he remembers from the Sixties.
‘I was seven years old when Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy were shot. I remember taking all these toy guns I had and giving them to my dad, and my dad took them on the TV show and said, “My son gave me all his toy guns.” So I was aware of it even then.’
The film, recently given four stars by the Mail’s Brian Viner, who saw an early screening, has two parallel stories. Matt Damon and Julianne Moore play a couple living with their young son in a Stepford-like town whose life is turned upside down when their home is broken into by two hapless criminals.
Attending the Netflix special screening and reception of The White Helmets hosted by The Clooney Foundation For Justice, in January this year
Meanwhile, the house opposite, occupied by the town’s only black family, is being targeted by racists. Damon is an old pal of George’s — ‘He likes playing buffoons,’ George notes gleefully — and making his big-screen debut as Matt and Julianne’s son is 13-year-old British newcomer Noah Jupe.
‘He’s a really good kid,’ says Clooney. ‘When I was on ER I played a paediatrician, so I worked with kid actors every day — and for the most part they shouldn’t have been there. They weren’t able to be kids and I hated it. This kid, though, he’s unbelievably normal.’
To sum up, life is pretty nice in the Clooney world. ‘There was a basketball coach named Jim Valvano who was dying of cancer, and he made a speech about how you should laugh very hard every day and be moved to tears every day, and never give up.
‘I took that to heart. Even if it’s a cold and miserable day, I don’t go, “This is a cold and miserable day.” I look on it as an adventure.’
Suburbicon will be in cinemas from November 24.