George Clooney has the most hilarious parenting tip for the holiday season! The Boys in the Boat director revealed that his twins, Ella and Alexander, absolutely love Santa Claus.
“They’re still all into the Santa thing, which is very helpful, because when my kids are acting poorly, let’s say in July, I have a call from Santa,” George, 62, told People of his kids with wife Amal Clooney.
The Academy Award winner admitted to getting pretty creative during his fake phone calls with Santa.
“And I go, ‘Hey Santa, how’s it going?’ And he’s like, ‘Everything’s going good. How are the kids?’ And I go, ‘Well, I don’t know. Kids, how are you guys doing?’ They’re like, [whining]. And then I get away with it,” he continued.
To make Ella and Alexander, both 6, truly believe that he is talking to Santa, George enlisted the help of one of his pals. “I actually have a buddy whose phone comes up ‘Santa,’” the ER alum confessed.
This isn’t the first time George opened up about his holiday phone call tactic to get his kids to behave.
“At 3 years old, you’re just trying to keep your kids in line in general, so I devised a way to get them to behave during this time,” he said of his little ones during an appearance on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert in December 2020.
He continued, “When they’re asleep in the morning — they sleep in the same bedroom — they start to make noises, and you can hear the two of them getting at each other, and I stand outside the door, and I go ‘Oh hi Santa!’ and then you hear Santa is there and he’s like ‘Ho ho ho!’”
George has certainly kept a great sense of humor when parenting his two kids and it’s a trait that both Ella and Alexander inherited from him.
“They’re funny, and they pull pranks on me,” the Kennedy Center Honoree shared during an episode of the “WTF with Marc Maron” podcast in November 2021. “I just look at them thinking, I couldn’t be happier and I couldn’t be more surprised at how happy I am.”
He also shared his plans to focus on fatherhood and potentially take on fewer projects in the future. Amal, 45, also feels the same way about her career as a barrister.
“I’ve committed to a certain amount of work that I’m going to do, making sure that I’m going to do that because it’s a commitment and it’s the right thing to do. And she’s in the exact same place,” George said. “It’s going to take about a year, we figure. And then, it doesn’t mean she’s going to stop taking the cases that she wants, it just means she’s not going to take six. And I’m not going to do four jobs a year; I’m going to do one.”
