Amal Clooney was born in Beirut after her mother had a very difficult pregnancy. Her birth came during a lull in Lebanon’s civil war, and so her father named her Amal, which is Arabic for “hope.” Clooney has gone on to become a high-powered barrister in international human rights. According to Geoffrey Robertson, co-founder of Doughty Street Chambers, the firm where Clooney works, she’s been “leading intellectual thinker on the concept of fairness—in a trial where you don’t have a jury and where, sometimes, you don’t have a defendant.” Clooney’s highest-profile legal battle to date is taking on ISIS with Nadia Murad Basee Taha, the 23-year-old Yazidi student turned ISIS sex trafficking survivor turned Nobel Peace Prize nominee and United Nations goodwill ambassador. Clooney is also a celebrated humanitarian and fashion icon. To top it off, she’s married to George Clooney.
Vogue met with the new mother of twins at her house on a tiny island called Sonning Eye to get an inside look at her busy life, filled with work, philanthropy and family. Amal Clooney’s fame came about when she got engaged to George in 2014. But Amal already had a notable career and a long list of achievements long before she met and started dating the movie star. She was 35 when she met George, at a time where it “wasn’t obvious it was going to happen for me.” As a barrister, Clooney focused on free speech and women’s rights. On top of everything else, Clooney is now working on a book with Philippa Webb, a faculty member at King’s College London, which seeks to synthesize a full canon of international court literature to create a sort of practical manual for lawyers and judges across the world.
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