George Clooney has confirmed that we’ve seen the last of him in a Batman suit, joking: “I do not think there’s enough drugs in the world for me to go back.”
The actor and director was speaking to Entertainment Tonight on the red carpet for his new film The Boys in the Boat.
Clooney played the DC superhero in 1997’s Batman & Robin and recently reprised the character for a brief cameo in this year’s The Flash.
“I thought there was such a clamour for me to come back as Batman, as you know. There was a clamour,” Clooney quipped.
“I actually said, ‘Where are my rubber nipples?’ And they were like, ‘Can we do it without the rubber nipples?’ I was like, ‘Well, it’s not really my Batman, is it?’”
Speaking to The Guardian, Clooney was asked what he would do differently if he could live his life again.
“Now, the obvious answer to your question would be to joke, Batman & Robin,” he said. “And I wouldn’t do it at all.” Adding that the movie was an important lesson, he said: “I learned that if you’re gonna be held responsible for a film, instead of just being an actor in that film, you’d better pick better films.”
George Clooney attends a screening of ‘The Boys In The Boat’ in New York— (Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images)
The 62-year-old actor made parts of the new film on his iPad while bedbound after he fell ill with the virus – with his producer partner Grant Heslov lending a hand from the set.
Clooney told People magazine: “I was really sick. It was my first time getting Covid.
“I’m on an iPad hacking away from my bedroom. Grant was sitting on the camera and they’d hold up the iPad to Cal and I’d go, ‘Ah, go fast.’ I’d rasp out ‘Faster’ whatever that was.”
A string of other staff on the film – including star Joel Edgerton, 49 – were also hit with the virus.
Clooney added: “He went down first, by the way, in fairness. So if we’re looking for ground zero… .”
The actor and director believes an intimate dinner with cast members from the movie, which tells the story of the University of Washington’s rowing team of underdogs making it to the 1936 Olympics, helped spread the virus even though they were all “tested and vaccinated”.
He said: “We all landed in London. We’re going to shoot the next day. And so we have a tiny dinner for the crew.
“Meaning the rowers, our kids, and (stars) Hadley (Robinson) and Courtney (Henggeler) and (Edgerton) and me.
“That’s it. A tiny room. And out of that tiny room, let’s say there were 18 people there, 17 people got Covid.”
The Boys in the Boat is in US cinemas now and will arrive in the UK on 12 January.
