Actor George Clooney claims that he never actually worked with Arnold Schwarzenegger during production on Batman & Robin, even though the two appear in multiple scenes together in the movie.
When interviewed by Howard Stern on his SiriusXM show, Clooney said he and Schwarzenegger "never even saw each other" on the Batman & Robin set during filming. He went on to add "It's a big, monster machine, and I just sort of jumped in and did what they said."
Clooney starred in 1997's Batman & Robin as Bruce Wayne, taking over the role from Val Kilmer, who played the character a single time in 1995's Batman Forever. The film pits Batman and his sidekick Robin (Chris O'Donnell) against the villainous Mr. Freeze (Schwarzenegger), who ultimately teams up with Poison Ivy (Uma Thurman) and tries to turn Gotham City into a frozen wasteland. Alicia Silverstone costarred as Batgirl in the movie, which was directed by Batman Forever helmsman Joel Schumacher.
Batman & Robin was a notorious box office bomb that earned terrible reviews and led to the franchise being rebooted with Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins eight years later. Clooney has rarely missed an opportunity to poke fun at his performance in the film since then, while Batman & Robin writer Akiva Goldsman was equally self-deprecating when he apologized for the movie in an interview earlier this year, saying "We didn't mean for it to be bad."
Despite the movie's initial panning, Batman & Robin has attracted a semi-cult following over the past couple decades thanks to its campy tone and flamboyant production design. Some fans have even gone so far as to proclaim that its corny style makes Batman & Robin the most faithful adaptation of the earliest Batman comic book stories. Silverstone has also said she would play Batgirl again if offered the chance and praised her fight scenes with Thurman in the movie, adding that she believes the movie "would be much better" if it were made today.
Source: Howard Stern, via The Hollywood Reporter