In the world of Hollywood and celebrities, one is always regarded lucky when a normal non-celebrity person is able to get romantically involved with a celebrity. In 2013, when the media outlets broke the news that the most eligible bachelor of Hollywood, George Clooney is dating a non-celebrity and is quite serious about getting settled, everyone including me thought that the actor has struck gold.
The woman in the context is none other than the renowned Lebanese-British human rights lawyer and activist Amal Clooney (née Alamuddin) who happened to literally knock on his door one day and into his life. Though the large audience of the internet is familiar with her due to her insanely famous actor husband, there is more to her than just being a pretty face and George Clooney’s wife.
Early life
Amal Ramzi Alamuddin was born on 3 February 1978 in Beirut, Lebanon. When she was only two years old, amidst the1980s Lebanese Civil War, her family left Lebanon and settled in Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire. Amal comes from a family with strong individual careers.
Her father, Ramzi Alam Uddin received his MBA degree at the American University of Beirut and before moving back to Lebanon in 199, was the owner of COMET travel agency, while her mother Bariaa Miknass, is a foreign editor of the Pan-Arab newspaper al-Hayat and a founder of the public relations company International Communication Experts, which is part of a larger company that specializes in celebrity guest bookings, publicity photography, and event promotion. She has 3 siblings; one sister and two half-brothers from her father’s first marriage.
Education
Amal completed her early educations from Dr. Challoner’s High School, a girls’ grammar school located in Little Chalfont, Buckinghamshire. She received a scholarship to attend St Hugh’s College, Oxford University in 1996 where she completed her bachelor’s degree in Jurisprudence (Oxford’s equivalent to the LLB) in 2000. During her academic period in Oxford, she received an Exhibition and the Shrigley Award.
Amal then entered New York University School of Law to study for the Master’s degree where she received the Jack J. Katz Memorial Award for excellence in entertainment law. Apart from keeping excellent academic grades, she worked for Sonia Sotomayor who was a judge for the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. She completed her studies in 2002 and passed New York State Bar the same year. She is qualified to practice law in both US and UK as she passed her bar test in England & Wales in 2010.
Early Career
Right after passing the bar exam in New York in 2002, Amal started working at the New York City-based Sullivan & Cromwell, one of the top-ranked law firms in the world. She worked there for 3 years as part of the Criminal Defense and Investigations Group that included newsworthy clients like Enron and Arthur Andersen ( The Enron Scandal ).
Amal completed her judicial clerkship at the International Court of Justice under Judge Vladen S. Vereshchetin from Russia, Judge Nabil Elaraby from Egypt and Ad hoc Judge Sir Franklin Berman from the United Kingdom in 2004.
In 2005, Amal became a part of the Office of the Prosecutor at the United Nations Special Tribunal for Lebanon in the Hague which was established to prosecute those guilty of the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafic Hariri.
Breakthrough Career
In 2010, Amal returned to Britain to work as a barrister at Doughty Street Chambers which is famous for its past work related to civil liberties. After this, she began handling a lot of high profile cases like the defense of former Ukranian prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko; Muammar al-Qaddafi’s intelligence chief Abdullah al-Senussi; and WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange.
In 2013, Amal played an important role as adviser to Special Envoy Kofi Annan for United Nations Commission on Syria and as a counsel related to the use of drones in counter-terrorism operations.
She was also an adviser to the King of Bahrain in connection with the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry headed by Professor M. Cherif Bassiouni.
Amal has been a prime contributor to the Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict initiative that especially works to defend the rights of women in war zones. In early 2015, she began working for representing Armenia on behalf of Doughty Street Chambers along with Geoffrey Robertson QC against turkey for the denial of Armenian genocide.
Besides working in groundbreaking cases, Amal was a faculty member and a senior fellow with Columbia Law School’s Human Rights Institute for the spring academic semester in 2015 and 2016. She has also given lectures in Law School of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, The New School in New York City, The Hague Academy of International Law, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
High-profile Marriage
Amal Alamuddin, a woman who had already a name for herself in the legal world suddenly started becoming a household name when the news about her romantic entanglement with the notorious bachelor of Hollywood George Clooney came to light. Within fourteen months of knowing each other, their relationship progressed from dating to engaged and finally to married on September 27, 2014, at Venice, Italy’s city hall. They held their lavish wedding ceremony a few days earlier that included well known Hollywood celebrities like Matt Damon, Brad Pitt, Sandra Bullock, U2’s Bono to name a few as guests.
Amal and George are one of that couple who happened to meet by fate and immediately became a Hollywood power couple. The Clooneys had bought the Mill House on an island in the River Thames at Sonning Eye in England at a cost of around £10 million. In February 2017, the Clooneys’ was reported to be expecting twins. She gave birth to a healthy girl and boy – Ella and Alexander on June 6, 2017. George seems like a proud husband and a committed father who can’t stop gushing about how great his life is with his wife and children.
They both have a shared interest in protecting human rights during times of international conflict. One of their first philanthropic work as a couple was when they donated the money they received for their wedding photos to a human rights charity. Their combined wealth has allowed them the ability to do more philanthropy works.
They have co-founded the Clooney Foundation for Justice to advance justice in courtrooms, communities, and classrooms around the world. In aftermath of Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in 2018, they marched on March 24 supporting the young generations from all over the country. They also started a domino effect by donating $500,000 for ‘March For Our Lives’ that later included other powerful people like Oprah Winfrey, Steven Spielberg, and Jeffrey Katzenberg.
Trivia
- In the Texas Conference 2016, Amal Clooney urged the world to take actions when it came to the woman who was the victim of ISIS through the middle east. In September 2016, she officially took a step forward against the ISIS planning to take it to court for genocide on behalf of human trafficking survivor Nadia Murad.
- Amal Clooney is a red carpet stunner with her designer gowns and every appearance she makes in the red carpet becomes a look to steal from.
- Amal Clooney is often compared with American actress Anne Hathaway for her facial resemblance. When Hathaway heard about this she reacted saying ‘ It will be the best thing that will happen to me today’ and saying she hopes to be half the woman Amal is.
- She once told the US Today that she takes all these difficult cases because that’s what she feels most passionate about. She said it’s not her option to just give up and that if she wanted easy cases she would have prosecuted traffic violations.