George Clooney says his children have a ‘much better life’ raised in France than La | George Clooney

George Clooney said his decision to base himself in France was informed by a desire to give his children a better start in life than if they had remained in the United States.

The actor, 64, who has eight-year-old twins Ella and Alexander with his wife, human rights lawyer Amal Clooney, gave a lengthy interview to US Esquire Magazine while staying at his Italian villa on Lake Como.

“We live on a farm in France,” he said. “A lot of my life growing up was on a farm, and as a kid I hated the whole idea. But now for (the twins), it’s like – they’re not on their iPads, you know? They eat dinner with adults and have to take their dishes.

“They have a much better life. I was worried about raising our kids in Los Angeles, in the culture of Hollywood. I felt like they were never going to shake out of life. France – they don’t care about fame. I don’t want them walking around worried about the paparazzi. I don’t want them to be compared to someone else’s famous kids.”

Clooney’s father, Nick, now 91, was a local television anchor in Cincinnati and the actor reflected that the age gap between him and his own children means similar comparisons will be harder to draw.

“The only thing I feel lucky about is that I’m so much older that the idea that my son would be compared to me is pretty unlikely, because by the time he’s done anything, I’m going to be wasting my bread.”

He also spoke of his desire to ensure his children were self-sufficient, encouraging them to help out in the park and assist with his shine-repairing skills, variously, a fan belt (using a pair of his wife’s stockings), a coffee machine and the automated pool cover. “It’s important to me that they can survive,” he said.

In April 2025, Amal Clooney was among a number of high-level legal advisers to the International Criminal Court warned by the Foreign Office that they could be subject to sanctions by the Trump administration, including being banned from entering the United States.

Last year, Amal Clooney sat on a panel that recommended ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. The warrant was duly issued in November 2024, citing the allegation that the men had committed war crimes in Gaza, including using starvation as a method of warfare, during Israel’s fight against Hamas.

In February, Trump issued an executive order imposing sanctions on the ICC and naming Khan in its annex, promising to “impose tangible and meaningful consequences on those responsible for ICC transgressions, some of which may include blocking property and assets, as well as suspending entry into the United States of ICC officials, employees and agents, and their immediate family members.”

Clooney has not commented on his wife’s work, although speaking to Anderson Cooper in the spring he hit on concerns of Trump’s persecution, saying, “My wife spent two years in a bunker trying out Hezbollah. She is the only person to subdue Isis.

Clooney then made his Broadway run known in a stage version of the 2005 film Good Night, which, he said, was made much more stressful by his age.

“As you get older, it doesn’t matter how many granola bars you eat; your brain starts to shut down,” he said. “I had all these long monologues, and I was afraid of blowing out my lines. So every night for 100 performances, I would do all the acting in the dressing room before going on stage. I was so terrified.”

Clooney is currently promoting Jay Kelly, the Noah Baumbach film in which he plays a Clooney-esque movie star reevaluating his life ahead of a lifetime tribute. Making the film, Clooney said, also made him look back on the ups and downs of his own career, and the impact that had had on his own health and his family.

He told Esquire that, although never addicted to alcohol, he had “runs where I would get pretty toasted every night” and having tried cocaine in the early 1980s.

“At the time, it was like, ‘No, it’s not like heroin. It’s not addictive. But then it was like, “Oh, well, this is actually pretty bad.” Plus, everything was cut with the mannitol.

Watching movie classics from the same period with his wife had also made him reevaluate this time, he said, recalling a viewing of Animal House, which he billed as a film with “no equal.”

“She said, ‘Well, let’s look at that.’ “I go, ‘I don’t know if it’s going to hold. Like, the First scene, A 13 year old girl faints and the devil appears on the guy’s shoulder and says, “Fuck her brains! And my wife looks at me like, “Are you kidding me?” And I’m like, ‘Oh my God, it’s terrible! ‘”