Clooney's wife, Amal, is a human rights lawyer and deals in cases relating to terrorism. The actor states that this, alongside his high profile, could amount to "real-world consequences" for their children.
Clooney was reacting to The Daily Mail putting pictures of actress Billy Lourd's children on their site. They then subsequently removed them.
The Hollywood actor accepted the fact that being the subject of "intrusive photos" comes with the territory, but that his children "have made no such commitment".
The photographing of celebrity's children has long since been an issue around Hollywood. In 2013, Halle Berry backed a bill that passed in the state of California, putting restrictions on taking photos without parental consent.
The full open letter is below:
An open letter to the Daily Mail and other publications.
Having just seen photos of Billie Lourd’s 1 year-old baby in your publication, and the fact that you subsequently took those pictures down, we would request that you refrain from putting our children’s faces in your publication. I am a public figure and accept the oftentimes intrusive photos as part of the price to pay for doing my job. Our children have made no such commitment.
The nature of my wife’s work has her confronting and putting on trial terrorist groups and we take as much precaution as we can to keep our family safe. We cannot protect our children if any publication puts their faces on their cover.
We have never sold a picture of our kids, we are not on social media and never post pictures because to do so would put their lives in jeopardy. Not paranoid jeopardy but real-world issues, with real-world consequences.
We hope that you would agree that the need to sell advertisement isn’t greater than the need to keep innocent children from being targeted.
Thank you,
George Clooney
