George Clooney is one of the most sought after actors in Hollywood today. With titles under his belt like O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Michael Clayton, Ocean’s Eleven, and an impressive stint on the medical drama, ER, it’s hard to believe he ever made crap like Batman & Robin.

I appreciate awesomely-bad movies as much as the next gal, and 1997’s Batman & Robin is one of the best. Batsuits with leather nips, Arnold Schwarzenegger, underground motorcycle racing… I could go on for days. I guess everyone has to start somewhere, and this is no exception. Clooney told Showbiz Spy:

“I don’t regret anything…with hindsight it’s easy to look back at Batman and go, ‘Woah! that was really shit, and I was really bad in it. The truth is, Batman is still the biggest break I ever had. It changed my career. I wouldn’t be doing this now if it hadn’t been for Batman.”

The Batman franchise has seen an amazing rebirth in the last five years thanks to the work of Christopher Nolan and Christian Bale. Both Batman Begins and The Dark Knight were box office smash successes. In fact, Batman Begins had a strong hand in shaping the movie industry’s choices in making other comic book and graphic novel adaptations.

Before we go feeling too bad for George, let’s remember that Val Kilmer was in Willow, and Christian Bale started off in the cult favorite musical, Newsies. Singing newspaper boys. Think about that.