Marriage and fatherhood have given George Clooney a new perspective on life, work and the world we all share. While his young twins play outside, he talks about outsmarting war criminals, battles with Boris and dinnertime debates with Amal

Dad-chat with George Clooney, father of two. While the actor’s twin three-year-olds, Ella and Alexander, are out on the family tennis court, learning to ride their bikes, Clooney sits in a curtained edit suite inside his Los Angeles home, wondering how they’re getting on out there. “They’ve learned how to get going fast,” says the 59-year-old who, unless otherwise specified, speaks at all times in the measured, half-ironic, woodsmoked tones of just about every leading man he’s played in a quarter-century career. “They just haven’t learned to use their brakes yet.”

Clooney rubs at his two-day beard, anxious, fond. He wears a fawn-coloured polo shirt and he has his grey hair cropped short. I think I notice that slightly wild-eyed look of someone still marvelling at the fact of their parenthood, and I ask him, is he a scaredy-cat dad, always trailing behind his children with his arms outstretched in case they fall? Or is he a let-them-fall-to-learn-about-the-hard-truths-of-the-world sort of dad?