The actor took home the trophy for the category during the 74th Primetime Emmy Awards.
Michael Keaton just made awards season history by becoming the first male performer to sweep all five major TV awards by winning the Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie for his performance in Dopesick.
Prior to Monday night, the 70-year-old actor won the same category at the Critics Choice Awards, Golden Globes, SAG Awards and Television Critics Association Awards.
“You have about 90 of these, don't you?” Keaton quipped to presenter Oprah Winfrey while accepting his award onstage at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles during the 74th annual ceremony.
"I have to tell you first of all, my face hurts so much from all the fake smiling I've been doing," he joked. "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. 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, neighbors would come down and actually watch it when I saw this thing, this was my face from age maybe 5 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," he continued. "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," Keaton said.
"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...," he said, the end of his acceptance speech bleeped out for TV.
While Keaton's the first actor to complete the sweep, five other women -- Sarah Paulson, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Michelle Williams, Catherine O'Hara and most recently, Jean Smart -- have done this before.
In addition to the five awards, Keaton also took home the Hollywood Critics Association TV Award for his turn as Dr. Samuel Finnix in the Hulu true-crime series about the opioid crisis in the United States.
“I wasn’t really ready for the journey when I signed on,” Keaton previously told ET about the role, revealing he personally was familiar with the tragic outcomes of the opioid crisis and thought it was an interesting subject to tackle onscreen.
The challenge, the actor explained, was delivering a grounded performance as Dr. Finnix goes from being the source of care and comfort to falling prey to the same drug he was convinced by Purdue sales reps was safe to prescribe.
“You see this guy’s journey and it’s a big one. In the way he looks, in the way he acts. There’s no special effects or anything, here it’s all nuanced,” Keaton shared.
The 74th Primetime Emmy Awards hosted by Kenan Thompson were broadcast live on NBC and Peacock. In the meantime, check out the full winners list and stay tuned to ETonline.com for complete Emmys coverage.
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