Michael Keaton Nets First Emmy For Lead Turn In ‘Dopesick’, Recalls Getting Hooked On TV During Its First Golden Age

deadline.com:

Michael Keaton led off the competitive categories at tonight’s Emmys by capturing the Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Anthology Series or Movie for his turn in Dopesick.Accepting the statuette from Oprah Winfrey, the lead presenter called upon to highlight the evening’s gravitas, the 71-year-old Keaton reserved his most heartfelt thanks for his family.

In particular, he recalled his father winning a raffle when he was a grade-schooler, bringing home the prize of a black-and-white television set.“We kind of lived out in the country” in Pennsylvania, he explained, and the device became his portal to a different world as the medium was beginning to sweep across the world in the late-1950s and early 1960s. “I could not take my eyes off it.

It was magic,” he remembered. “I watched all of the cowboy shows and especially the comedies, and all the gangster shows and I fell in love with it.” He recalled re-enacting what he saw on the screen and the importance of how his parents and siblings reacted to him.“To this day, they were never demeaning, they were never dismissive, they never looked down on it,” he said. “They never made fun of it.

In fact, they would ask me to re-enact scenes for them. My folks were not exactly patrons of the arts. We weren’t patrons of anything, frankly.