Herbie: Fully Loaded - I think I was becoming boring, as well as bored

FROM the period 1988 to 1992, Michael Keaton was practically a household name following successful roles in Batman, its sequel and the likes of Pacific Heights and Beetlejuice.

But the star then fell out of the limelight for some time during the mid-to-late 90s for a number of reasons, most of which he is happy to talk candidly about.

"I reached a point where I didn’t think I was that great," he explained to journalists at the press conference for his latest film, Herbie: Fully Loaded.

"I’m not being humble. I was looking at things and thinking ‘Hmm, you’re really not that good in that’.

"I think I was becoming boring, as well as bored. It was nobody’s fault except mine, probably. So it’s been like that.

"I was getting scripts and I’d think ‘What’s the point of this?’ So I turned an awful lot of films down."

Keaton did, however, record a sizable box office hit earlier this year with the supernatural thriller, White Noise, while Herbie was another nice earner at the US box office.

In the film, the actor plays a racing legend-turned-father who is forced to continue the family business alone, while also raising a teenage daughter (Lindsay Lohan).

And he was attracted to the role because it contained many of the classic Disney values, as well as reviving one of cinema's icons.

"I thought when I read the script it was a nicely written film. I really think this is a very nice film.," he continued.

"And when I saw it on the screen, I really admired what Angela [the director] had done. I thought she positioned the movie real nicely so that for the next hour-and-a-half you were on board, as it were.

"I thought they created a natural character out of the car. It was very charming... It’s also classically Disney."

That said, Keaton does confess to having missed the whole Herbie phenomena when it first made its big screen appearance in The Love Bug in 1968.

"I’ve been thinking about that and I thought ‘Did I have a stroke?’," he joked.

"I vaguely remember a Bug with flowers on it, and Dean Jones. That’s it.

"But I missed it, I don’t know what happened. I know they existed as part of the culture but I didn’t know they were this big. Jesus… I can remember where I was at the moon landings or when Kennedy got shot, but I don’t remember where I was when Herbie came out."