George Clooney Officially Becomes a Citizen of France

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Oscar-winning Hollywood star George Clooney and his wife, human rights lawyer Amal Clooney, were formally granted French citizenship over the weekend after years of living in the country.

A notice published Saturday in France’s official government gazette, Journal Officiel, announced their new naturalized status, listing Amal under her maiden name, Amal Alamuddin, and Clooney’s full legal name alongside those of their eight-year-old twins.

The decision comes amid the family’s gradual but deliberate retreat from Los Angeles and the culture that made Clooney famous. The Clooneys now live on a sprawling farm in Provence, where the actor has spoken openly about rejecting celebrity lifestyle in favor of a more private one for the sake of his children.

“I was worried about raising our kids in LA, in the culture of Hollywood. I felt like they were never going to get a fair shake at life. France, they kind of don’t give a sh*t about fame,” Clooney told Esquire in October.

France’s strict privacy laws sharply limit paparazzi intrusion and place criminal penalties on photographing children without consent.

“I don’t want them to be walking around worried about paparazzi. I don’t want them being compared to somebody else’s famous kids,” Clooney told the magazine.

In an open letter in 2021 the actor urged media outlets to stop publishing images of his children, pleading that while he was “a public figure and accept the oftentimes intrusive photos” that his children “have made no such commitment.”

Clooney married the British-Lebanese lawyer in 2014 and their twins were born in 2017. The family purchased their Provence estate in 2021, reportedly for more than $8 million, complete with vineyards, olive groves and an 18th-century manor.

The actor, a longtime Democratic activist, has been a critic of President Donald Trump and famously penned a bombshell op-ed in the New York Times during the 2024 presidential election calling on former President Joe Biden to step aside.