George and Amal Clooney made a rare public appearance together last week at the Skoll World Forum in Oxford, England to discuss the work of their Clooney Foundation for Justice.
The Hollywood star, 62, and his barrister wife, 46, co-founded the organization in late 2016 to "advocate for justice in courtrooms, classrooms, and communities around the world."
"It's nice to be in a room with people that get [expletive] done," George said at the start of their discussion, as per The Hollywood Reporter. He called the organization's work "holding people's feet to the fire," saying that it involved a lot of "failing and then finally succeeding," and deemed that his wife and their team were perfect for the job because they had the patience for it.
He passionately continued: "You can't guilt really [expletive] human beings into being good people…You can't get the Sultan of Brunei to act on his own. But what you can do is you can guilt the [expletive] out of people that do business with them."
George explained: "So you go to the cruise lines and gas lines and you go, 'The same [expletive] that's happening to the hotels that the Sultan of Brunei owns is going to happen to you.' And then they go to the Sultan of Brunei and go, 'Dude, what are you doing? Knock it off!' And that's how you actually get it to change."
Amal spoke about her time at law school in Oxford 24 years ago and explained specifically why their foundation used the term "waging justice," saying: "We use that verb very deliberately because it's a fight."
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"And we think of it as a process where we have to gather our forces and gather allies and be really determined like you do when you're fighting a war."
She continued: "We're living through a time when we have more violent conflicts than at any time since the Second World War. Two billion people, a quarter of the world's population, is living through violent conflict, and we see women and children increasingly on the frontlines."
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Amal emphasized that a lot of conflicts weren't just taking place beyond borders, but closer to home as well, with George referencing the Arizona Supreme Court's recent decision to reinstate a law that bans nearly all abortions in the state. "You can't take anything for granted."
The father-of-two spoke about writing, directing, and starring in the 2005 Oscar-nominated politically charged Good Night, and Good Luck, recalling: "Good Night, and Good Luck I wrote because I was being called a traitor to my country by my own country for being against the war in Iraq."
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"The idea was anybody who spoke out against the war in 2003 was a traitor, and it wasn't really fun. They were picketing my movies, and all that kind of stuff."
"So we wrote it, because we liked the idea that it has to be entertaining, people have to be engaged," he said. "Storytelling is about finding a way to relate to people things that they can understand and not overwhelm them with peas and carrots."
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