A US senator who’s third in line to the presidency has starred in 5 ‘Batman’ movies

• Sen. Patrick Leahy is third in line to the Presidency after VP Kamala Harris and Nancy Pelosi.
• Leahy is a huge Batman fan and has featured in six “Batman” projects including “The Dark Knight.”
• Leahy is currently presiding over the impeachment of Donald Trump.
• Visit Insider’s homepage for more stories.

Sen. Patrick Leahy, the man third in line to be the presidency, is a massive Batman fan and has featured in five movies starring the caped crusader, including Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight.”

Following Joe Biden’s inauguration, Leahy was installed as the President pro tempore on January 21, making him third in line to the presidency behind Vice President Kamala Harris and the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi. He previously held this position between 2012 and 2015 during the Obama administration. 

Leahy is state senator of Vermont, along with Sen. Bernie Sanders. Leahy was first elected to the senate in 1975, but that isn’t the only impressive thing on his CV.

As well as being Vermont’s longest-serving senator, Leahy has six film and TV credits – all for Batman-related works.

He first appeared as himself in a brief role in 1995’s “Batman Forever,” alongside Val Kilmer’s Bruce Wayne, Jim Carrey’s the Riddler, and Tommy Lee Jones’ Two-Face. That same year, he featured in one episode of “Batman: The Animated Series.” He is credited as playing Territorial Governor.

He played himself again in 1997 when he popped up in "Batman & Robin," starring George Clooney as Batman.

He had to wait 11 years for his next "Batman" project, which has become his best-known. In 2008, he played a Wayne Enterprises board member in "The Dark Knight," and shared a scene with the Oscar-winning Heath Ledger, who played the Joker. 

When Joker interrupts Bruce Wayne's party, Leahy is the man who stands up to the clown prince of Gotham and tells him defiantly: "We're not intimidated by thugs." Joker then grabs Leahy by the collar and holds a knife to his neck, which Leahy said was genuinely terrifying.

"He scared the heck out of me, when he came at me with the knife. I didn't have to act," Leahy told Roll Call in 2016.

 

Leahy reprised this same role in the final film of Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy "The Dark Knight Rises." His last and most recent appearance came in 2016's "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice," where he played Senator Purrington. His character makes a speech during a Senate hearing that is then destroyed by an explosion.

It remains to be seen if Leahy will make any more "Batman" cameos in the future, but he definitely will not be continuing his tradition in Matt Reeves' upcoming "The Batman" movie starring Robert Pattinson. Leahy told the Burlington Free Press in August 2020: "I have too many other things going on with COVID, with appropriation bills... Otherwise, I'd be happy to do another one. I'd consider it if these were normal times."

Proving that he is as much a superhero as his comic book idol, Leahy donates all of the fees and royalties he receives from his "Batman" appearances to charities. Namely, he donates a lot of this money to the Kellogg-Hubbard Library in Vermont where he used to read comic books and first fell in love with Batman as a child.

On his Senate website, Leahy writes that some of his "fondest memories as a child" were at that library, while in his foreword of "Detective Comics: 80 Years of Batman," Leahy wrote that he loves Batman because he has "human strengths and human frailties.

"The Batman prevailed through superior intellect and detective skills, through the freedoms afforded by great wealth and through sheer will," Leahy wrote. "Not superpowers, but skill, science and rationality."

Leahy was recently briefly hospitalized just hours after being sworn in on the Senate floor to preside over the impeachment of former president Donald Trump.

Trump himself is no stranger to movie cameos, having made 11 appearances in films as himself including "Zoolander," "Two Weeks Notice," and "Home Alone 2: Lost in New York," which people want him removed from.

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