Sen. Leahy has speaking role in upcoming Batman film

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), building on past involvement with the DC Comics character Batman, has a small speaking role in this summer’s presumptive blockbuster film “The Dark Knight Rises.”

Leahy has long been a fan of the Batman character, and this is not his first cameo appearance in a Batman film. He first developed an affinity for the superhero character as a child, when he would read comic books at the Kellogg-Hubbard Library in Montpelier, Vt., according to his office.

Leahy dedicates all profit achieved from appearing in the films, including royalty fees from residual showings of the hit movies, to the children’s wing of the same library.

According to Internet Movie Database, Leahy also voiced a character in the animated “Batman” series from the early 1990s, and had a cameo in both the 1997 movie “Batman & Robin,” starring George Clooney as Batman, and 2008’s “The Dark Knight,” the second movie in a trilogy concluding with “Rises.”

In “The Dark Knight,” he played a guest with one line in a scene where Batman villain The Joker, played by the late Heath Ledger, interrupted a party. He told The Associated Press that in “Rises,” he will appear in a scene with Batman, played by Christian Bale, and Lucius Fox, played by Morgan Freeman.

His office also noted Leahy previously wrote the introduction for The Dark Knight Archives Vol. 1, a 1992 reprint of early Batman comics, and a preface opposing the use of landmines for the 1996 graphic novel Batman: Death of Innocents.

The Warner Brothers/DC Entertainment film, directed by Christopher Nolan, opens July 20. Leahy will attend an early screening of the movie July 15 in Vermont that benefits two local charities.

Updated at 3:26 p.m.

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