He is known for playing the role of Willis Thomas Bell in the American drama television series The Paper Chase.

[4] Keane began his career in 1975, appearing in the film Three Days of the Condor playing a store clerk.

Between acting jobs, he was an elevator operator at the Sherry-Netherland hotel in New York, where he met film director, Francis Ford Coppola.

[4] In 1978 Keane joined the cast of the new CBS drama television series The Paper Chase as the law student Willis Thomas Bell.

[4] He also appeared in the 1979 film Apocalypse Now, and was hired to overdub some of Marlon Brando’s lines in the television miniseries of The Godfather.