While Michael Keaton has just celebrated his 70th birthday, back in 2014, in an interview for Charlie Rose where the interpreter of “Beetlejuice” recounted how he had met Tim Burton and brought his macabre character to life.
While the famous American comedian Michael Keaton celebrated his 70th birthday last weekend, going back three decades, when he was just starting his acting career and in particular met a director not like the others who would put his foot in the stirrup: the wacky and enigmatic Tim Burton.
In 2014, at the microphone of the Charlie Rose channel, Keaton thus evoked the way in which the scenario writer had described to him the strange character of Beetlejuice, macabre “bio-exorcist” which he did not succeed immediately to define:
“I had no idea what he [Tim Burton] was talking, but I liked it “, he said, specifying that even after three interviews with the director, he still felt completely helpless in relation to his role. So Keaton decided to take the lead, and literally get involved in the visual development of his character:
Warner Bros.
“[Tim Burton] said a couple of things that I remembered, and I asked him to give me a night, or a few days. I called the costume department in the studio and asked them to send me a bunch of costumes from different eras, at random (…). Burton had said something else, about the fact that the character existed through all times, and all places. And I had an idea of teething, an idea of a process. “
As well as Michael keaton told it in the same interview, so it’s thanks to the enigmatic guidelines of Burton, materialized by his own imagination, that was born the so particular look of Beetlejuice:



Warner Bros.
“I said I wanted hair that looked like my fingers were stuck in an electrical outlet. And mold, because Tim said he lived under rocks.”
It wasn’t until the day when Michael Keaton arrived on set dressed up and dressed up that Tim Burton finally discovered the result: a unique and new costume that he totally approved of, probably sensing – and rightly so – that the adventures of Beetlejuice would mark a very first success in his career, as well as that of Michael Keaton.
(Re) discover the blunders and mistakes of “Beetlejuice” …