Retiring Sen. Patrick Leahy has made appearances in five different Batman movies, and he says one of them was opposite one of the worst depictions of the Dark Knight.
“George would be the first one to say,” the Vermont Democrat said of 1997’s “Batman and Robin” star Clooney, “he was not the best Batman.”
“His wife once told me this,” the 82-year-old lawmaker said of the actor’s spouse, attorney Amal Clooney, “he didn’t want her to see that Batman movie.”
Leahy said that Clooney once quipped to Leahy’s wife, Marcelle, “You know that Batman movie that Patrick was in? He almost ruined the franchise.”
“I said, ‘Wait a minute — I was on the screen for one minute. You played Batman,’ ” Leahy exclaimed to the Academy Award winner.
“[Clooney] said, ‘It’s all your fault. It would’ve gone great, except for you being in the movie.’”
Leahy’s burn of Clooney as Bruce Lame came at the Kennedy Center Honors earlier this month, where the movie star was one of several artists receiving the prestigious award.
But Leahy acknowledged that the ribbing between him and the entertainer has been — at least mostly — in jest.
“We tease each other like that all the time,” he said with a wide grin.
Clooney himself has frequently made light of his turn as the DC Comics superhero.
He said at an Honors-related ceremony that he’s been “lucky enough to meet millions of people in … probably 125 countries” over the years.
“And they all without exception agree, and they’ll come up to me and say specifically that ‘You sucked as Batman!’”
“It’s unifying,” Clooney, 61, cracked. “We could solve world problems if we could all just agree on more than that I sucked as Batman.”