George and Amal Clooney Are Great Role Models for Their Kids! See Their Best Quotes on Parenting

Hoping for Prankster Kids

George is one of Hollywood’s most infamous pranksters, and he’s making sure to pass along his skills to his twins. “He’s mainly teaching pranks for the time being. But we’ll see if it develops,” Amal told Entertainment Tonight at the red carpet premiere of The Tender Bar on October 3. George quickly quipped, “Well, I think those can really pay off over time.”

On What Fatherhood Has Given George

“[Fatherhood has given me] everything,” the Tomorrowland actor said to Hoda Kotb during an appearance on Today, noting his role as the dad of Ella and Alexander has given him “a sense of belonging and a sense of home and unconditional love — all the things that you were hoping you could get from a really good career and a dog. You realize that this is a lot more than that.”

Though George never yearned to have kids, he “met Amal and realized that [his] life had been pretty empty,” he told Hoda. “And then when you throw these two kids in there, then suddenly you realize how incredibly empty it was.”

On Life in Lockdown

Life has been a little different for George and Amal while social distancing amid the coronavirus pandemic, and the actor gave a glimpse of what it’s been like while chatting with W magazine in February 2021.

“I’ll tell you what I’ve taken on as a hobby: two or three loads of laundry a day [and] dishes all day long because these kids are slobs,” he joked with the outlet. “Apparently, you have to wash your children every once in a while.” Stay strong, George!

On Seeing Their Kids Smile

“I want them to be happy. I want them to have a sense of humor. I want them to be interested in things. I want them to be compassionate about other people’s plights. Because that’s the thing, you know? You have to have some sort of empathy,” George told The Hollywood Reporter about his kids in September 2017.

On Keeping Their Kids’ Bellies Full

The couple’s children are doing great. “They’re good. They’re fat!” the actor joked to ET in May 2019. “To keep ’em quiet, you just feed ’em.”

On Having Entertaining Tots

“They have their own personalities. [Alexander] goes outside and hugs my car … It’s bad when I’m driving. That’s really not good. He gets right in the wheel well sometimes,” the Descendants star joked on Ellen. “And then my daughter slept in my wife’s closet with purses going, ‘Mine!’ So, I see this is gonna be a fun life for me.”

On Spending Time With Their Twins

Amal is still trying to find the right balance between work and her family life. In a May 2018 interview with Vogue, she said she and her hubby like to have “quality time” with their little ones in the morning.

“Between 6 and 8 in the morning we get to have them in our bed — I don’t schedule any calls before 8,” Amal revealed. “When I was nursing, it was much more complicated, because there are two. I had all manner of weird cushions and pillows and machines.”

On Naming Their Kids

When Amal was still pregnant with her little ones, she and George were having a hard time thinking of baby names.

“We figured these kids are going to be looked at a lot and watched and [have their] every move sort of judged, and we wanted them to at least have a break with the names,” the doting dad explained to People in September 2017. “So we looked for some sort of normal names. We didn’t have any great inspiration. It wasn’t Alexander the Great and Ella Fitzgerald.”

On Instilling Confidence in Ella

Amal is an empowered woman and she tries to teach Ella how to be confident too. “As women, there is a bond that we all share. It’s a bond of shared experience. Experiences that only women go through and struggles that only women face,” she once said at the Texas Conference for Women in 2016, according to Vanity Fair. “The worst thing that we can do as women is not stand up for each other. And this is something that we can practice every day no matter where we are or what we do. Because if we are united, there is no limit to what we can do.”

On How Parenthood Changed Them

Having a baby can change anyone’s life drastically. “I cry more than they do. I cry four times a day right now because I’m so tired,” George hilariously told Daily Mail in September 2017. “Hey, remember back when you were single, before you didn’t have to worry about keeping people alive? Wasn’t that great?”

On Learning the True Meaning of Responsibility

Being a dad made the Ocean’s Eleven star learn a lot about being responsible for other people. “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 told The Daily Mail. “I have always felt a great sense of responsibility to other people in the world, but when you have children of your own, you realize 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.”

On the Joys of Parenthood

Parenting has made George the happiest man in the world! “Every single day of my life, I just feel lucky,” he gushed to THR.

On a Cute Mistake

George and Amal made an appearance on CBS Mornings in September 2022 where they revealed a cute detail about their kiddos.

“We’ve made a terrible mistake,” the Hollywood icon confessed. “We taught them Italian.”

He continued, “But we don’t speak Italian. So, we’ve armed them with a language they can harm us with. And we both don’t really know what they’re saying.”

The twins also speak French. In addition to the proud parents gushing over their children’s talents, the brunette beauty shared that Alexander is a “big prankster.” He gets his love for pulling off hilarious pranks from his jokester father!

A Funny Anecdote

In December 2023, George revealed what his kids think he does for work.

“They think that all I do is play in the water,” he told Entertainment Tonight. “I did a movie a couple years ago called Midnight Sky. I had to shoot stuff in a tank and they came to visit. I’m like in, you know, clothes but I’m in a tank and they just assume that I swim.”

“So whenever I say I go to work, they think I’m swimming,” he added.

On a Surprise

George revealed the most surprising thing about raising twins.

“Twins tell you a lot,” George said in a December 2023 Good Morning America interview.

“When you have twins and you’re raising [them] the same time, the same way, and they’re completely different human beings, you realize how little say you have in who they are,” he explained. “You try to give them some boundaries and you try to give them things that you believe in, but they’re just different.”

“They come out with an opinion, and it’s amazing to watch how different my kids’ personalities are,” George gushed.