Clooney turns on charm for future mother-in-law

He can overcome any obstacle on screen with ease, but George Clooney must have been daunted by his latest real-life challenge: meeting his mother-in-law to be.

Two months after Clooney popped the question to Amal Alamuddin, 36, he whisked her mother, Baria, out to his $50 million holiday home for what is believed to be their first meeting.

Given Mrs Alamuddin's stature as an award-winning journalist, the long-time bachelor must have been braced for a grilling.

However, Mrs Alamuddin - only 13 years Clooney's senior - is said to have enjoyed her time with the Hollywood star.

Amal is one of Mrs Alamuddin's four children, along with her other daughter, Tala, and sons Samer and Ziad.

She is the foreign editor of Al Hayat, a popular Arab newspaper, and has appeared numerous times as an expert on Middle Eastern affairs on CNN, Al-Jazeera, CNBC, the BBC and Sky News.

With her husband, Ramzi - a retired professor of business studies at the American University of Beirut - she fled her native Lebanon for Britain when Amal was 2, escaping the civil war that raged in the country between 1975 and 1990. Daily Mail