George Clooney, Julianne Moore and Matt Damon cover the latest issue of The Hollywood Reporter, the Toronto International Film Festival edition/preview. George’s latest film, Suburbicon, will screen at TIFF, just as it screened at Venice. Something that cracks me up: Angelina Jolie was blasted for talking about herself during the promotion for First They Killed My Father, with people saying that directors should “never” do that much press. This THR piece is almost entirely about George and Amal and their life together, and the bulk of the interview was conducted in Como, at George’s Italian summer home. You can read the full THR piece here. Some highlights:

George, telling Galloway the story behind his April 28, 2014 proposal to Amal: “I’m the cook in the family. Believe me, Amal makes reservations. I did pasta of some form, not that impressive. And then over champagne, after dinner, I told her there was a lighter to light the candle in the drawer, and she reached back and pulled out a ring. And I did all the stuff, got down on my knee and did all the things you’re supposed to do. I had a playlist with my Rosemary songs on it [his late aunt was the singer Rosemary Clooney], and I was waiting for this song, ‘Why Shouldn’t I?’ ‘Why shouldn’t I take a chance when romance passes by? / Why shouldn’t I know of love?’ It’s a really good song about why can’t I be in love? And it played, and she’s like, ‘Holy sh-t!’ And she just kept staring at the ring, going, ‘Oh, my God.’ It was 20 minutes of me on my knee, waiting for her to say yes, because she was so shocked. She only said yes when ‘Goody, Goody’ came on, which isn’t very romantic — it’s kind of mean: ‘So you met someone who set you back on your heels, goody, goody.’”

Amal, to Galloway, the advice she’ll give her children: “My sister Tala has twins, and they’re wonderful,” she says, then asks me, as a twin, for any advice. I counsel against encouraging them to compete with each other. “Don’t be competitive,” she murmurs, seeming to weigh my words — as if she needs guidance from me or anyone else. I ask if she’d like more children, and she shakes her head. “I’m 39,” she says. “I already had them quite late.”

Amal, revealing what surprises her most about George: At one point, Clooney rises to massage his wife’s shoulders. When he moves out of hearing, I ask what has most surprised her in their four years together. “What a great father he is,” she says. Later, when I mention this to Clooney, he seems caught unawares. “She said that?” he asks. “Really?”

George, on a happy life spent diaper-changing: “Now my house is filled with the warm sounds of babies crying. You should see when my friends show up and see me change a diaper, the laughter that comes from them. I go, ‘I know, I know.’ I’ve given them so much sh-t for so many years, I deserve every bit of it” … “We are unrested — we’re both unrested, and she’s more unrested than me, obviously. But I’m a very good diaper guy, which I didn’t know I would be.

George, on meeting Donald Trump: “I was sitting down at a restaurant in New York [several years ago] and he came in and we talked for a while,” he recalls. “I’d had neck surgery, and he said, ‘I’ll give you the name of a doctor,’ and he wrote me a couple of times with the name. Then he went on Larry King Live and told him I was very short. I’m 5-foot- 11 — I’m not the tallest actor in the world, but I’m not short. That made me laugh.”

George, on Trump’s “great crime”: “It would be best for the country if some of these Republicans — and some of them I’m very good friends with, actually — stood up [to him]. There’s an important distinction that doesn’t get said enough — the difference between Black Lives Matter and the KKK and the skinheads and the alt-right is this: Black Lives Matter was protesting in support of racial equality. Period. Sometimes it got out of hand, absolutely. But that’s what they were doing. You can never say, ‘Well, those guys were bad and these guys were bad.’ And to hear those words come out of the president of the United States, that is a great crime.”

George, on what’s next: “I haven’t acted in almost two years and I am not really sure when the next version of that would be. If somebody brought me The Verdict, I’d jump. But I’m not going to do movies just to be in front of the camera. I did that for a long time and I had a good run. And as you get older, the parts aren’t as interesting. I’m not a leading man anymore. Nobody wants to see me kiss the girl”

On a career in politics: “I’d like to not think I would be in politics. I’d like to think that would make my life miserable. I don’t really think about that. But I do think you always have to participate, in your town and your country and the world.”

[From THR]

George has told the engagement story before, when he appeared on Ellen, and it came across like a rehearsed monologue back then. Maybe he’s still “practicing” that story. If it’s true, then I guess I respect Amal for making him wait for 20 minutes while she really thought about it. What else… I respect Amal for saying that she’s done having babies at 39. And I disagree with George about Trump’s “great crime” of equating BLM with neo-Nazis. While Trump was and is trash for his racism and his comments on Charlottesville, let’s not pretend that there isn’t an embarrassment of riches when it comes to the crimes Donald Trump has committed.

Photos courtesy of The Hollywood Reporter.