George Clooney Warned Ben Affleck About This Movie Role

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Bella Breakdown

George Clooney had some advice for Academy Award-winning actor Ben Affleck when it came to his role as Batman. According, to The Hollywood Reporter “Award Chatter” podcast, the actor advised Affleck not to take on the role as the dark knight.

“[Arnold] Schwarzenegger was paid, I think, $25 million for that, which was like 20 times more than I was paid for it, and, you know, we never even worked together! We worked together one day. But I took all the heat,” Clooney said about the negative reviews of 1997’s ‘Batman & Robin.’

Despite the film’s poor reviews, the ‘ER’ alum says he was taught a valuable lesson. “Now, fair deal; I was playing Batman and I wasn’t good in it, and it wasn’t a good film, but what I learned from that failure was, I had to rethink how I was working. Because now I wasn’t just an actor getting a role, I was being held responsible for the film itself.”

The lesson was so valuable, Clooney tried to warn fellow actor and friend Affleck from taking on the same role almost 20 years later. “I actually did talk to him about it. I said, ‘Don’t do it,'” Clooney told the podcast hosts. “It was only from my experience, which is, you know …” As we know, Affleck did not listen to his friend and went on to star and direct 2016’s ‘Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice.’

Like many of the DC movies, the film wasn’t received well, earning a 27% on Rotten Tomatoes, but Clooney praised Affleck’s take on the masked caper. “He did great, though.”