Knowing his audience. George Clooney introduced himself to the crowd at the Variety Power of Women event sponsored by Audi and Lifetime at the Beverly Wilshire Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills as his wife’s spouse on Friday, October 12. “Hi. I’m George. I’m Amal Clooney’s husband,” the Oscar-winning actor joked, adding, “I can read this room.”
George, 57, has had Amal’s impressive resume as a human rights lawyer and activist pointed out to him before: In 2015, Golden Globe cohost Tina Fey teased him about his AFI Lifetime Achievement Award by saying, “George Clooney married Amal Alamuddin this year. Amal is a human rights lawyer who worked on the Enron case, was an adviser to Kofi Annan regarding Syria and was selected to a three-person U.N. commission investigating rules of war violations in the Gaza Strip. So tonight, her husband is getting a lifetime achievement award.”
Amal, 40, was not in attendance at the Variety event: She was scheduled to deliver a keynote speech at the Pennsylvania Conference for Women 2018, an engagement which also kept her from attending Princess Eugenie’s wedding on Friday.
The Suburbicon star was on hand at the event to present one of the event’s honorees, Parkland, Florida, shooting survivor Emma Gonzalez
Gonzalez made headlines in February for her emotional, viral speech following the Valentine’s Day tragedy at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, which left 17 students and staff members dead. On March 24, she remembered her fallen classmates with six minutes and 20 seconds of silence.
“For 6 minutes and 20 seconds, the same time it took someone to take 17 innocent lives, Emma Gonzales stood in front of 800,000 people and she forced us to listen,” Clooney said. “Not to her words, there are none. How could there be? She made us listen to her heart.”
Tiffany Haddish, Regina King, Lena Waithe and Natalie Portman were also honored at the event.
George and Amal got engaged after six months of dating in April 2014. They wed in September of that same year and welcomed twins Ella and Alexander in June 2017.
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