There’s a Bat in the belfry this Labor Day with the 65th birthday of Michael Keaton, aka Tim Burton’s ‘Batman’

After making a name for himself as a comic actor with films such as Night Shift, Mr. Mom, and Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice, Keaton went dark and brooding as Gotham City billionaire philanthropist Bruce Wayne and his masked Caped Crusader alter-ego.  Released in the summer of 1989, Batman became the year’s biggest blockbuster: forever signaling Keaton onto the iconic A-List of superheroes among critics and comic book fans.  After watching his parents murdered as a child, young Bruce Wayne grows up to use “those wonderful toys” of his to protect the good citizens of Gotham against the man who made the Batman first: mobster Jack Napier (Jack Nicholson), whom Batman made into the psychotic Joker.  Keaton collaborated with Burton for 1992’s Batman Returns, where handsome and dazed Bruce Wayne/Batman became cat-nip to the yummy and roaring Selina Kyle/Catwoman (Michelle Pfeiffer), who forms an alliance with the Penguin (Danny Devito) against the Bat.  

Keaton and Burton didn’t return for a third installment in the Batman film franchise.  Val Kilmer and director Joel Schumacher succeeded them in 1995’s Batman Forever, where the Caped Crusader became a little bit more like the live-action 1960s television series starring Adam West and Burt Ward.

In what many called a comeback, Keaton earned rave reviews, a Golden Globe, and an Oscar nomination for 2014’s Birdman: playing an actor, known for his role as a superhero, seeks to revive his career by taking on a Broadway role.