George Clooney: Bad at marriage but engaged again
The 52-year-old eternal bachelor proposed to humanitarian lawyer Alamuddin after dating the British beauty for less than a year.
Alamuddin, 36, was spotted showing off an engagement ring as she and Clooney dined at Nobu in Malibu last Thursday with Cindy Crawford and her husband, Rande Gerber.
“George and Amal are trying to keep things very low-key but they also aren’t really trying to hide this, it doesn’t seem,” said a source. “I think it’s like they want the people they love to know that this is real, that they plan on being together forever.”
Clooney split from Stacy Keibler in July 2013 after two years of dating.
Alamuddin studied at Oxford and the New York University School of Law, speaks three languages — French, Arabic, and English — and has represented Wikileaks founder Julian Assange in his extradition proceedings with Sweden and is now an adviser to former UN secretary general Kofi Annan, the special envoy to Syria.
After they were spotted leaving a dinner together in London in November 2013, Clooney initially denied he was dating Alamuddin, saying they were working together on a satellite programme for Syria. But in February he took her to a screening of his movie, The Monuments Men, at the White House, along with his parents, Nick and Nina Clooney.
Then, in March, Clooney and Alamuddin were pictured looking romantic together on a luxury safari vacation watching wildlife in Tanzania, before heading to the Seychelles.
Clooney, who was married to actress Talia Balsam from 1989 to 1993, told Esquire in December that he wasn’t suited to marriage. He said: “I haven’t had aspirations in that way, ever. I was married in 1989. I wasn’t very good at it... I was quoted as saying I’ll never get married again pretty much right after I got divorced and then I’ve never talked about it since.”
He added that while some people think it is strange he does not have children, he is not in a rush to start a family. He said: “Should I go: ‘I got to get me some kids right now!’ and rush out and impregnate someone? Look, what I do know is that I was raised in a loving, happy family. I don’t have any dislike or distrust of that.”
As recently as 2012, his sister Adelia Zeidler said: “George will probably not get married. He decided that he could have the career or he could have a family.” Beirut-born Alamuddin is a member of Doughty Street Chambers, London, having joined in 2010 to complete her pupillage.
Eminent lawyer Geoffrey Robertson, joint head of chambers, said Alamuddin “brings a bright light to everything she is involved in, and I am so delighted at her happy news”.
