George Clooney reveals he advised Ben Affleck to reject Batman role

George Clooney has been chatting about Batman & Robin again – and also about recommending Ben Affleck turn the Batman role down.

Like a lunar eclipse, there’s something satisfying about George Clooney’s occasional apologies for his portrayal of Batman. It reminds us that the world is still turning and that in the face of such an all-encompassing force of nature, we are but small, insignificant beings.

That’s certainly what Clooney has been getting at in his latest admittance of failure whilst wearing the cape and cowl in 1997’s Batman & Robin. The actor, who can next be seen in Netflix’s upcoming The Midnight Sky (a film he’s also directed) was reflecting once again on his much-maligned performance. And like the aforementioned lunar eclipse, he remarked that it was was something that was simply far, far beyond his control.

Speaking on the Howard Stern show (via Deadline), Clooney said that “it’s so bad that it actually hurts to watch, you’ll be flipping the channels and it’ll just pop up and I’m like ‘oh no, no, no”.

He added that “it’s a big machine, that thing. At that point I was just an actor getting an acting job, I wasn’t the guy that could green light a movie”.