Father-to-be Clooney ‘will stop going to war zones’

Hollywood star George Clooney said Thursday that he will be stopping his visits to the world’s troublespots now that his wife is pregnant with twins. The actor — who campaigns against war and famine in Africa — told the French magazine Paris Match that he would “no longer go” to conflict-torn South Sudan nor the Congo.

He said he and his Lebanese-born lawyer wife Amal Clooney — who has been involved in a string of high-profile human rights cases — had “decided to be a lot more responsible and avoid danger”. He said she would no longer be working in Iraq “or places where she is not welcome”, he was quoted as saying by the magazine, which translated his comments from English.

Asked about the immense responsibility of bringing a child into the world, the actor — who will be 56 when he becomes a father — said “how could you not be anxious?” He had earlier told French television the couple were “really happy and really excited. It’s going to be an adventure. We’ve sort of embraced it all with arms wide open.”

The Clooneys announced this week that they were expecting twins this summer and the actor said Thursday that they didn’t want to know their sex.

Clooney joked that the press had been saying for three years that Amal was pregnant “but this time it is true”. He also waded into the row over Roman Polanski being forced to drop out of Friday’s “French Oscars”, the Cesars, saying it was alarming that the controversial director was still being pursued over a 40-year-old statutory rape case.

Clooney, who will be awarded an honorary Cesar at the ceremony in Paris, said it was also time that 83-year-old Polanski “put an end” to the saga.

Earlier this month Polanski’s lawyers began a legal bid for him to be allowed to return to the United States. The maker of “Chinatown” and “Rosemary’s Baby” fled the country in 1978 after fearing that a judge was about to go back on a plea bargain deal that saw him serve 42 days in jail.

His victim Samantha Geimer, who was 13 when the rape took place at the Hollywood home of actor Jack Nicholson, has previously appealed to US authorities for the case to be dropped saying she wanted to move on with her life.