How did we not already know this??

Fr. Mike Schmitz, beloved speaker and Catholic personality, was almost cast to play Robin in the 1995 film Batman Forever.

Yes, really.

This amazing fact about Fr. Schmitz was revealed by Sarah Swafford in her introduction for him before his keynote address at FOCUS‘ 2017 SEEK conference for Catholic college students.

“As Sarah said, it’s a true story,” Fr. Schmitz confirmed soon after he came on stage. “I was almost cast as Robin in Batman Forever. I made it to the final cut of the auditions.”

But his amazing story doesn’t end there.

“And so the audition went really well, so after I auditioned for Robin, they said, ‘Would you want to audition for another movie we’re casting?’ And I said, ‘Sure.’ So they said, ‘Ok.’ [We] act out the scene, they filmed it. They were like, ‘That was so much fun we’re going to submit you, we think you’d be good as that character.’

“The movie was called Hackers, and I auditioned for the male lead. I didn’t get it.

“But it’s interesting because the male lead played opposite the female lead, and the female lead was played by Angelina Jolie. And those two people ended up marrying each other. So, I could have been the first ex-Mr. Angelina Jolie. That could have been part of my story.”

Lol! The conference audience had a good laugh at that part.

Fr. Schmitz went on to give an incredibly inspirational talk, exhorting the room full of 13,000 college students to radically follow after Jesus and change the world.

Here’s a video of Fr. Schmitz’ amazing keynote address (which includes him telling the movie story):

[See also: 3 Reasons Why Genuflecting Is So Important, According to Fr. Mike Schmitz]

[See also: The Mysterious Image of Our Lady of the Fjords, Oldest Photo of an Apparition]