“I was never happier”: why Michael Keaton was thrilled to be booted off the airwaves in 1977
Michael Keaton is a name so established that it feels odd to think of him anywhere other than in the prime of the spotlight.
And yet, way back in the 1970s, long before the Hollywood blockbuster heights of Batman or Beetlejuice ever came calling, it was a tumultuous process for the young Keaton to find his first footing in the famously unforgiving film landscape. That acclimatisation plainly wasn’t helped by the fact he felt he wasn’t even working in his own skin, though.
You see, Keaton’s real name was Michael Douglas. For obvious reasons, when actors’ union rules stipulate that everyone needs to have a different name, and particularly ones that distinguish you from bona fide icons, that moniker wasn’t going to cut it. Rumour had it for a long time that he picked Keaton as an homage to Diane, but he dismissed that as nothing more than rubbish.
The point in that whole tangent was that it took Keaton perhaps a longer time than normal to truly feel comfortable in front of the camera, issues about his name and identity to one side. As many future hopefuls often do, he started out bright-eyed in the business of sitcoms – but he quickly realised there was only so much canned laughter that one man can take.
Keaton appeared in various long-since-forgotten American shows of the ‘70s era. You know the type: nameless comedies with questionable jokes that probably don’t bear repeating now. But it was a matter of luck of the draw. For some, it might not run for long before the money runs dry. In other cases, an actor could find themselves on that same studio floor for the rest of time.
In Keaton’s case, he actually considered himself quite fortunate for his roles to fall into the former category. A life pictured in the same dreary role, performing the same drawn-out storylines, was not something he could stomach. “I was never happier,” he freely admitted when his shows were cancelled. “Oh my God, it felt like I got out of prison. The idea of doing something over and over for years drives me crazy.”
It might have been a slightly over-dramatic stance to take on the matter – after all, he was getting paid to stand in front of a camera, not get sent off to war – but you could see his point nonetheless. Keaton wanted a career that was more vivacious, exciting, and promising than the same dull routine every week. Essentially, he never wanted to be stuck in one place.
That definitely worked out for him, as bigger and arguably brighter things arrived once he realised he was right to turn his back on the status quo. To say that a failed ‘70s sitcom was responsible for the slew of awards Keaton has bagged might be an insult to the man himself, but to the rest of the world, it was definitely a plausible path.
