George Clooney has always been Hollywood’s most charming contradiction – the movie star who never quite behaved like one. But somewhere between his Oscar wins, tequila fortune, and the birth of his twins, he did something very different. He left.
Yes, just when you thought his life couldn’t get anymore dreamy, the actor, 64, and his wife, international human rights lawyer Amal Clooney, moved to a farm in the south of France. The kind of farm where tomatoes come straight from the garden.
“I was worried about raising our kids in L.A.,” Clooney told Esquire. “I felt like they were never going to get a fair shake at life. France – they kind of don’t give a s- about fame.” Utimately, it speaks to what it really means to be famous in 2025 – even the rich and powerful are looking for something real, and they’re certainly not going to find it in Hollywood.
Clooney’s retreat from Hollywood is certainly not a rejection of work – he’s still collecting nominations and headlining films (his latest, Jay Kelly, premiered at Venice to glowing reviews). It’s a rejection of the ecosystem that turns family life into branding, privacy into luxury, and children into legacy projects.
In a culture that now prizes visibility as currency, Clooney’s decision to step away feels insurgent. The “fame economy,” as sociologists have come to call it, runs on constant output: stories, photos, posts, red carpets, access. Celebrities no longer just act or sing – they feed the algorithm, they stay “relevant”, and frankly, isn’t parenting exhausting enough without having to turn your family into a brand?
“I grew up partly on a farm, and as a kid I hated it,” Clooney admitted. “But now, for them, it’s like – they’re not on their iPads. They have dinner with grown-ups and have to take their dishes in. They have a much better life.” It’s an image both idyllic and nostalgic – the screen-free childhood (remember that?), the family dinner table, the messy, carefree world of a child.
Amal Clooney, for her part, seems to share that ethos. In a recent interview, she revealed she takes away guests’ phones when they visit their home. “It’s important to get that balance,” she said. “You want to have time where people feel they can have a safe and frank exchange.”
It’s a telling gesture – collecting phones in a basket in a world that never stops recording – and speaks to how the couple like to parent. There’s something poignant, too, about Clooney’s insistence that his children remain unrecognised. “They don’t care about movie stars,” he told reporters. “Robert De Niro will be at the house and they’re like, ‘Who’s that?’” In an era when celebrity kids grow up with paparazzi archives before they can walk, the Clooney twins’ indifference might be the most luxurious inheritance of all.
What Clooney is really protecting isn’t privacy – it’s perspective. He wants his kids to grow up knowing that fame is a side effect of a life, not the goal. Moving to France wasn’t just about escaping Hollywood; it was about stepping out of a culture obsessed with being relevant. Maybe the real flex in 2025 isn’t how many eyes are on you – it’s deciding when to disappear altogether.
