Amal Clooney stepped off a water taxi in Venice on Friday wearing a £1,190 mesh Stella McCartney dress, holding hands with her husband George as the Venice Film Festival continued into its second week.
Amal, 48, accessorised the look with nude Aquazzura heels and large dark sunglasses. George, 65, wore a dark navy suit, letting his wife take centre stage during the star-studded two-week event.
The appearance came two days after George paid tribute to his wife in his acceptance speech for the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement on Wednesday. "By the way, my wife's the only person to have ever put ISIS on trial and won," he said. "She's a badass, and she gets the job done. We do it for our families. We do it for our friends."
Amal Clooney's Legal Career
Amal, a British-Lebanese human rights lawyer, has represented Yazidi survivors and helped secure historic legal victories holding ISIS members accountable for genocide.
George also spoke of the criticism his wife's work has attracted. "Amal's taken some very difficult stands over the years, and we've had to face some pretty heavy criticism based on that. I wrote an op-ed about President Joe Biden. I got some s***," he said.
"We have really interesting conversations around the table. But you know, we also have two nine-year-old kids, and we have a normal family life, and there's a lot of laughing and a lot of love, and we're very lucky, and we're really aware of that."
George Clooney on Free Speech
George also said he pushes back against people telling actors to "shut up" about human rights and political issues. "I didn't give away my freedom of speech the minute I became an actor," he said. "It also means that people can get mad at you and not like you anymore. Fair enough. That's how this works."
"You can't demand freedom of speech and then say, 'But don't say bad s*** about me.' Right? That's the deal," he added, before taking a swipe at President Donald Trump. "I get mean tweets from the President of the United States. That's okay. I can handle it. I'll do alright. I'll be fine. But that's part of life."
George and Trump have exchanged criticism of one another for years.
Attack on the US Administration
On Wednesday, George launched a broader attack on the current US administration, branding those in charge "the least qualified people" and saying decency had disappeared from public life.
"There is a great word, kakistocracy, which is a country run by the least qualified people. I think maybe we have a kakistocracy right now but we will get through it," he said. "We will have an election in November that should be a check and balance and then in 2028, with any luck, we will have some restoration."
He went on to call the administration "cruel". "The idea that cruelty is the base, that being cruel and unkind is part of the fun of all this," he told the press. "You see what the secretary of defense just tweeted out a picture about women in the military in Canada and you're going, 'What is wrong with you? Where is the sense of decency in all this?' I'm ashamed of all of that but we will get through it and we will come out better on the other side."
George was referring to a tweet by US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that appeared to mock the physical appearance of an overweight female Canadian soldier presenting a medal at a youth camp. Hegseth posted the image from a cadet training centre in British Columbia on Monday night with the caption "This is real".
Comparisons to 1968
George, who described himself as an optimist, said he had lived through darker periods in American history. "I'm old enough to have been through 1968 in the States when every city in the United States was set on fire and we lost Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy in the same year," he said. "There was tons of violence. The Capitol was surrounded with tanks. We've had some other difficult times, but this is one of them."
A Return to Venice
The couple, who married in Venice in 2014, arrived in the city earlier in the week for the film festival. They were seen attending an event at the Scuola Grande della Misericordia and travelling around the city by water taxi.
George later attended a talk on the future of creativity alongside Kennedy Yanko and posed with jury president Maggie Gyllenhaal. The outing followed Amal being seen on Thursday night in a blue and white mini dress.
