Michael Keatons gut made him sign ‘Beetlejuice’ after thinking it was bad’

Michael Keaton recalls how he almost made the biggest mistake of his career by saying no to Beetlejuice, but fortunately, he changed his mind just in time.

“I was once known as ‘Dr. No’ because I turned down a lot of roles—not out of arrogance, but just for various reasons,” Keaton shared in a recent cover story for People magazine.

He revealed that he nearly passed on working with Tim Burton as well.

“Someone asked me, ‘Do you want to meet this guy? He made this movie, Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, and other stuff,’” Keaton recalled. “I had seen bits of it, but I don’t think I ever watched the whole movie. I said, ‘Sure.’”

However, when Burton pitched Beetlejuice to him, Keaton was initially perplexed.

“I’m not being sarcastic,” Keaton explained. “I just didn’t understand what he was talking about. So I kept asking, ‘Wait a minute, but who is this character? What’s it about?’”

Despite his confusion, the meeting was “pleasant,” and Keaton agreed to another, though he was still unsure about the role.

“I remember thinking, ‘I don’t know what this is, and he’d probably be better off getting someone else because I just don’t get it.’ Not that I thought it was bad—I literally didn’t know what it was,” he told the magazine.

But something about Burton struck a chord with Keaton.

“My gut told me, ‘This guy is something special. Definitely something different.’ Plus, I just liked him. I liked him as a person. We got along well, and he seemed like the kind of eccentric artist I could connect with.”