Michael Keaton: ‘I said yes to Jackie Brown after Tarantino got me drunk’

Quentin Tarantino convinced Michael Keaton to star in Jackie Brown by getting him drunk on Jagermeister.
The filmmaker took Michael out in Los Angeles to offer him the part of federal agent Ray Nicolette in the crime movie, but the Birdman star admits he has little memory of accepting the role due to the effects of the German spirit.
“We go out on Sunset Boulevard (Los Angeles), Quentin has us drinking Jagermeister,” he revealed to Empire magazine. “Firstly, who drinks Jagermeister man? Anyway, I don’t know what happened but the next thing I’m heading home and I’m doing the movie.”
The next morning he had to tell his bemused but delighted agent that he’d taken the role, but couldn’t explain why he’d agreed to Quentin’s casting offer.
“So I go, ‘I guess I’m doing it’,” he said of his conversation with his representative. “My agent is all excited and goes, ‘Really? Why?’ And I’m like, ‘I don’t know, I just woke up an hour ago and I don’t remember.’”
Jackie Brown was nominated for one Oscar and also starred Pam Grier, Samuel L. Jackson and Robert De Niro.
The film, Quentin Tarantino’s third as a director, received a deluge of plaudits from critics, and Michael loved his character so much that he briefly reprised the role in Steven Soderbergh’s 1998 crime comedy Out of Sight.
“Nobody had ever done it (play the same character in an unrelated film) then and that was what appealed to me when Soderbergh called,” Michael explained, adding, “I wanted it to be like you might be in a Starbucks and see Ray Nicolette and not think anything of it.”