From KCRW Santa Monica and KCRW.com, it's The Treatment. I'm Elvis Mitchell. You're listening to my interview with Michael Keaton, taping from a live audience.

Be it comedy or drama, we know exactly what it is he's focused on.

And he has a particular quality for playing loners.

Loaners that make us want to know who and what these people are.

And there's no better example of that than his role in

Alejandro Gonzalez and Richel's film Birdman.

And I'm going to talk to him about all that.

Ladies and gentlemen,

let me welcome my old friend, Michael Keaton.

Thank you.

One of the first things I ever talked to you about when I met you was the degree of concentration.

You bring to this.

And it's almost really, you did some stand-up, but it's almost the way a stand-up passes like

concentrate to bring an audience into that space.

And I wonder if that's some of the concentration that you sort of use as an actor.

I hadn't thought of it like that, and it might be,

since I've been a kid, I've kind of,

I'm actually not joking about this when I say this,

but where I grew up, this wasn't, this was unheard of,

but I probably would have had to have been medicated as a kid.

Seriously, they would have probably started handing me Ritalin as a kid,

which I don't necessarily think would have been a great idea for me

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