Death. Taxes. George Clooney's bachelor status. For years, those were absolutes you could count on.

Because after an unsuccessful four-year marriage to Talia Balsam, the actor made it clear he'd sooner slip into his Batman suit, nipples and all, than walk down the aisle again. "I was marred in 1989. I wasn't very good at it," he told Esquire UK in January 2014. "I was quoted as saying I'll never get married again pretty much right after I got divorced and then I've never talked about it since."

But he doubled down in an interview with The Express that same month: "I keep saying I'll never get married again or have children but people just don't want to believe me."

Score one for the doubters—and international human rights attorney Amal Clooney (née Alamuddin). The decorated Oxford grad, 45, reversed the two-time Oscar winner's views on matrimony in just six months of dating. Now, nearly 10 years after their splashy Venice vows, they're enjoying a blissful marriage that has produced 5-year-old twins Ella and Alexander, the actor, turning 62 May 6, can't believe he ever saw it any other way.