When they tied the knot in 2014, George and Amal Clooney made one special vow to each other. “Our deal is that we can’t be more than a week apart,” George said of coordinating their busy schedules. “So far, that’s worked out pretty well.”
But in the past couple of years, it’s proved more and more difficult to stick to. “They are both hardcore workaholics, so it’s like they’re in their own little bubble,” a source exclusively tells In Touch, noting that George is soon relocating to NYC for about a year to star on Broadway — 4,000 miles away from his and Amal’s Lake Como villa, where they spend most of their time as a family. Now, the couple, who will mark 10 years of marriage in September, are starting to crack under the pressure, adds the source. “They are in two very different worlds 90 percent of the day. They’re leading separate lives.”
George has always insisted his family comes first. “I don’t have to act,” the Oscar winner said in 2021. “My wife and I had this conversation when I turned 60. I said, ‘We both love what we do. But we gotta make sure we don’t book ourselves silly.’”
But since then, George, now 63, has arguably done just that. He’s directed The Boys in the Boat, filmed Wolfs alongside old friend Brad Pitt in NYC, and began filming another movie with Adam Sandler in Italy earlier this year, all while producing projects behind the scenes. “George runs his filmmaking operation — from directing and producing to taking acting roles in other people’s projects — like a military general. He’s a perfectionist and demands perfection from everybody who steps up to work with him,” says the source, adding that it’s only gotten “more extreme” since he and two friends, Rande Gerber and Michael Meldman, sold off their tequila company, Casamigos, in 2017 for $1 billion. “So you know he’s not doing it for the money. He truly enjoys it and is extremely hands-on.”
His wife is the same way. Amal, 46, “is often traveling back and forth for work, which can become chaotic,” an insider says of the human rights lawyer, who is often in London working with clients or in The Hague, Netherlands, where the International Criminal Court is located. (In May, Amal revealed she’d spent the past four months working on a panel with other international legal experts there, “evaluating evidence of suspected war crimes and crimes against humanity in Israel and Gaza,” which resulted in a detailed report supporting a series of arrest warrants.) “She’s doing so much around the world that most people don’t even know about,” says the insider. “Her career will never take a back seat to George’s career, and she made that clear to him very early on.”
Even when they’re together at their Italian villa, work is never far from their minds. “Neither of them thinks twice about putting in 18-hour days on projects they’re passionate about,” says the source, adding that George has a state-of- the-art production facility at home. “The only time they really have to ‘overlap’ is when they’re on vacation. But when you live in Lake Como, the urge to actually take a vacation doesn’t come up that often. They both have their own staff and friends, and there’s not a lot of crossover.” Whatever downtime they do have is spent with their 7-year-old twins, Alexander and Ella, adds the source, “not necessarily with each other.”
It’s not a good sign for their relationship. “They seem like the picture of bliss on the red carpet, and of course they always gush about each other in public, but friends are wondering if they’ll make it. A lot of Hollywood couples don’t,” says the insider, adding that recent security concerns over her international human rights work and his outspoken political views have also contributed to the stressors in the marriage.
The well-being of their family is paramount to them both, notes the insider. “The twins’ happiness is their top priority,” says the insider. If George and Amal were to continue to drift apart, a lot would be at stake: not only the kids, but also their combined $600 million fortune. (The Lake Como villa alone is worth at least $100 million.) Says the insider: “A divorce would be a nightmare.”
So with their 10th anniversary approaching, “they are trying to make more of an effort to spend quality time together,” says the insider, noting that George actually took the role in the Broadway play, based on his 2005 film, Good Night, and Good Luck, because Amal may be spending more time in NYC as part of her job as an adjunct professor at Columbia University. “But obviously she’ll still be traveling a lot, and he won’t be able to get away as easily. So unfortunately they’ll just be leading separate lives again.”
