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Michael Keaton makes history by becoming first male actor to win all 5 major TV awards

Michael Keaton makes history by becoming first male actor to win all 5 major TV awards
American actor Michael Keaton waves to the public as he poses for photographers during red carpet arrivals for American director Alexander Payne's film About Schmidt in Cannes in this file photo from, on May 22, 2002.
PHOTO: Reuters

Michael Keaton made history by becoming the first male actor to win all five major TV awards at the Primetime Emmy Awards on Monday (Sept 12) night.

The 70-year-old actor added to the Critics Choice Awards, Golden Globes, SAG Awards and Television Critics Association Awards he'd previously won when he took home the Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie Emmy for his performance in Dopesick.

Accepting the honour at Los Angeles' Microsoft Theater, he said: "I have to tell you first of all, my face hurts so much from all the fake smiling I've been doing.

"Thanks to the great folks at Disney and Hulu and everybody at that table, this is one of the special projects I've ever worked on. It means something, so thanks a lot. It's wonderful. I'm very, very grateful."

Michael - who beat out Colin Firth (The Staircase), Andrew Garfield (Under the Banner of Heaven), Oscar Isaac (Scenes from a Marriage), Himesh Patel (Station Eleven) and Sebastian Stan (Pam and Tommy) to take the accolade - went on to recall his long obsession with television as he thanked his family for their support.

He continued: "When I was a little, little kid, very small, my Dad wins something at a raffle, and he brings it home and it's a little black and white TV, literally about that big.

"And sometimes people, neighbours would come down and actually watch it when I saw this thing, this was my face from age maybe five to 10 and I could not take my eyes off it, it was magic and I watched all of the cowboy shows and especially the comedies, the gangster shows I fell in love with it and I would go and I would reenact these scenes or create my own scenes.

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"My parents and brothers and sisters would watch me out the window and to this day, they were never demeaning, they were never dismissive they never looked down upon it.

"They never made fun of me. In fact that would ask me to reenact scenes for them. My folks weren't exactly patrons of the arts. They weren't patrons of anything, frankly.

"I want to thank them I want to just thank all those people in my family for never making me feel foolish, because I went on to do that several times myself and that's the thing about feeling foolish and making a fool of yourself and making there's huge power and merit in that and I'm glad I made a fool of myself over and over and over again.

"And one thing I want to say, over the years we've all been through tough times. There have been some doubters. I've had some doubters. You know what? We're cool. But I also had those people for all these years when times were up who were the true believers..."

The rest of the veteran star's speech was then bleeped out.

While Michael is the first actor to take the five prizes, five women - Sarah Paulson, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Michelle Williams, Catherine O'Hara and Jean Smart - have previously done so.

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