Clooney: I'm 'Marrying Up' with Beirut Beauty

Hollywood hunk George Clooney believes that he is 'marrying up' as he gets ready to walk down the aisle with Lebenese beauty Amal Alamuddin.

Clooney - who got engaged to his fiancee in April - insists that he is the lucky one in the relationship.

Alamuddin is a high-profile lawyer in her own right, with numerous major cases to her name, such as the UN Special Tribunal for Lebanon, as well as representing Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.

Rumours claim that the pair are planning to get hitched later this year.

Meanwhile the 53-year-old former ER star also claims that he took particular pleasure in taking on the British tabloid press after they published false claims that Amal's mother objected to the couple's marriage on religious grounds.

He told Variety Magazine: "It's just fun to slap those bad guys every once in a while, knock 'em around...

"I would sit with my friends and we'd just go, 'So they just sat at a computer and just went, 'OK, this is what I'm gonna say today'.' I mean, literally, because you just go 'There isn't literally an element of truth in this.'

''You just laugh, and let it go. I'm used to it after all these years."