George Clooney is putting family first when it comes to the most important things in his life.
The actor, 63, opened up about his shifting priorities as he ages in an interview with The New York Times published on Thursday, February 20.
Clooney told the outlet he wants to make the most of his remaining years and lean into spending meaningful time with his wife and kids before age becomes a limitation. (Clooney has been married to wife Amal, 47, since 2014 and the couple shares twins, Alexander and Ella, who were both born in 2017.)
“I had this conversation with Amal when I turned 60,” Clooney said. “I said, ‘Look, I can still play full-court basketball. I can still run around. I can still do pretty much everything I did when I was 30. But in 30 years, I’m 90. That’s a real number. My dad just hit that. And there are some things you’re not doing no matter how many granola bars you eat.”
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He added: “I told Amal, ‘We have to focus on the next 20, 25 years of making sure that we’re jamming in everything we can.’ Not just work, because no one at the end of their life goes, ‘God, I wish I worked more.’”
Clooney, who met Amal when a mutual friend introduced them at his Lake Como house, shared that he was “proud” to be her husband as well as the father of her kids, and described feeling as though “everything made sense” after they fell in love.
The Ocean’s Eleven star reflected on his belief that relationships are easier if you’ve found the right person to be with, particularly when you’re navigating them while older.
“There’s a thing about finding the person that you needed to find, particularly at a certain age, and everything from then on is easy,” he said.
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The actor explained that he just doesn’t sweat the small stuff as much as he would have in his younger years, sharing a personal anecdote with the outlet to illustrate his point.
“We renovated our house,” Clooney said. “Amal would go, ‘I want to paint this wall yellow.’ Well, if I was 27 years old and doing construction work, I would’ve been like, ‘Well, that’s a stupid color.’ But the truth of the matter is that at 60, you just go, ‘OK.’ There are so many things that would have caused friction that don’t.”
