.+.DEFINING DIANE.+.
Article by Brad Stone
Photographs by Firooz Zahedi
More - July/August 2001


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She's worked - and played - with some of Hollywood's most fascinating leading men. But these days, being a mother is the role Keaton love best.

Take the endearing insecurity of Annie Hall, salt it with the intensity of Louise Bryant in Reds, add J.C. Wiatt's awakening to the joys of midlife motherhood in Baby Boom, and the result will be Diane Keaton. At 55, Keaton has been through a lot since she la-de-da'ed her way to a Best Actress Academy Award in 1977's Annie Hall. She's had a bevy of complicated relationships with famous costars. Then there was her all-consuming devotion to work during her twenties and thirties, which she now feels stunted her personal growth. and in 1990, her father died, causing her to reassess her life. "Even though all these obstacles keep coming at you, you just have to keep going through them," she says. "Because it's worth it to do something in your life, as opposed to fantasizing about doing something."

Today, Keaton is following that advice by sustaining her career and enlarging her family- which explains why she boarded a plane to New York in February. Her mission? To pick up a baby brother for her five-year-old adopted daughter, Dexter. Keaton and the nanny stayed at the Plaza Hotel, "just like Eloise, which I've never done," she says. Soon after they arrived, the door to the hotel room opened- and five-day-old Duke was brought in. "He was amazing," Keaton says, laughing, thrilled that her daughter now has a sibling. "We all need to share our personal history with somebody who has gone through it with us. It's a treasure in life."

I meet Keaton at the studio where she's doing post-production work on Pasadena, a pilot for Fox TV. She's directing, and while she's already helmed episodes of China Beach, Twin Peaks, and two feature films (including last year's Hanging Up), the process has her seriously unnerved. "I go insane," she says. "I'm an actress, I'm a drama queen. I get very upset and very nervous and even more anxious. . .Every day is like, 'Oh my God, can I get through the day?'" She'll have to steel herself in the coming weeks: in addition to Pasadena, she's developing a ten-part dramatic series on the women's rights movement for HBO, and will star in Crossed Over, a CBS move based on the 1992 book by Beverly Lowry.

But then, Keaton's used to hard work. She's performed since she was a child, putting on comedy shows for her family based on routines she'd seen on television, singing at the local Methodist church and acting in such high school shows as Little Mary Sunshine. Born Diane Hall, she grew up in Los Angeles, the oldest of four siblings. Her mother, Dorothy, was a talented amateur photographer; her father, Jack, was a civil engineer. The would-be actress attended Santa Ana College near L.A., and starred in several of the school's musical productions, including The Sound of Music. but after a year and a half, she dropped out, with the full support of her parents, to study with Sanford Meisner at New York's Neighborhood Playhouse. (It was around this time that she adopted her mother's maiden name, after discovering a Diane Hall registered with Actors Equity.)

Keaton quickly entered the public consciousness with her first Broadway role, in the 1968 hit Hair, becoming known as the actress who wouldn't take off her clothes in the finale. "Why should I have?" she asks. "I didn't believe it was a peace and love thing- I thought it was a highly competitive show, like any show." (In any event, she would make up for her modesty nine years later, when she appeared nude in Looking for Mr. Goodbar.)

The 23-year-old Keaton left Hair after auditioning for a young director named Woody Allen for his play (and later movie) Play It Again Sam. Their subsequent partnership, which spawned a celebrated romance, lasted for much of the Seventies. Allen created role after role tailor-made for his new muse: the neurotic, highly verbal Mary Wilke in Manhattan, the melodramatic Sonja in Love and Death and, of course, the free-spirited Annie Hall. Keaton ahs said she doesn't mind if people continue to identify her with her ditzy alter ego, though she says her real personality is a lot more like Allen's neurotic anti-hero. "I think once you play a part that is embraced, you live with it," she explains. "To me, the role was everything. It gave me every opportunity I've had in my life professionally."

She and Allen have remained close. "We still talk on the phone fairly regularly. . .Woody is a true friend," she says. The two reunited in 1993 for the well-regarded Manhattan Murder Mystery, and Keaton doesn't rule out the possibility of working with him again. "There's this aspect to Woody that is so profoundly warm, shockingly warm. And people don't think of that," she says. "But it's imbedded in him and kind of hard to see on the surface. In his movies, you see it all the time."

Keaton was a fundamental presence in many of Allen's most memorable films, but her collaboration with the reclusive director ended in the early Eighties, when Mia Farrow replaced her as his favorite leading lady, on- and off screen. Still, she's linked almost as indelibly to Francis Ford Coppola's legendary Godfather trilogy for her role as Kay Adams Corleone. During the filming of the first installment, she considered herself grievously miscast and felt isolated from the rest of the mostly Italian ensemble. "I didn't know anything about making movies. And I was just thrust into it." Today, she figures Coppola intentionally excluded her, since her character is also an outsider. And she thinks the first two movies are brilliant.

The same can be said of many Keaton performances, which show a growing range from light comedy to the depths of emotion. Her star turns in Reds (1981), Crimes of the Heart (1986), The Good Mother (1988), and Marvin's Room (1996), for which she got an Oscar nomination, have all been critically acclaimed. Nevertheless, the actress can't bear to watch herself on film. Last March, when the Santa Barbara International Film Festival honored her with its Modern Master Award, "they had all these clips of all these movies I've been in," she recalls. "I sat there and had to look at it. and I'm thinking, 'uh-huh, okay.'"

That attitude may explain why Keaton often implies that her career is headed straight for the ash heap. The First Wives Club, in which she starred with Bette Midler and Goldie Hawn in 1996, "saved my life," she says. Father of the Bride in 1991 "saved my career." (This is a woman who's never met a self-deprecating turn of phrase she doesn't like.) The public and critics obviously disagree. Her performances have been called everything from "tender, raw, moving and always fresh" (Newsweek on Reds) to "glorious" (The Boston Globe on Marvin's Room).

Almost as memorable as the acting, of course, have been those romances. Though she's never married, Keaton has had plenty of high profile liaisons with, among others, Warren Beatty, her love interest and director in the epic Reds, and Al Pacino, her leading man in the Godfather trilogy. (While she and Beatty are still "friendly," she doesn't talk to Pacino anymore- but adores Josie, the sheep dog/German shepard/Lab mix he gave her as a gift.) Steve Martin, with whom she shared top billing in the Father of the Bride films, capitalized on Keaton's proclivity for dating her leading men when he presented her with an award last year. "What dawned on me as I watched your clips is that I'm one of the few costars you haven't slept with," he told her in front of the assembled crowd. "I think this is something that's owed. . .and what better night!"

Sadly for Martin, Keaton now claims her dating days are behind her. "I don't really think about it very much anymore," she explains. "It's probably out of the picture, you know?" She admits that she gave up on the notion of meeting the true Mr. Right long ago. "I remember when I was younger, I honestly believed in some ridiculous way that you didn't really lose people- that you would find someone who would be the person you lived with until you died. Now, I understand that these are episodes we go through with people, and they don't all last."

Asked if she has any regrets, Keaton says that she hung onto the past for too long. "Those relationships were almost impossible for me to let go of," she admits. "Now that I'm older, time is valuable. . .You just think, gee, it would have been nice if we had parted a little earlier. There are so many things to do, so why are you quietly hanging on to something that's over?"

The actress has clearly moved on. Before she adopted Dexter in 1995, she led a regimented and often isolated life. Each morning, she would wake at five and drive to work down Hollywood Boulevard, often leaving stream-of-consciousness reminders for her staff on the office answering machine. (Since driving is not one of her strengths, the habit produced at least one accident and lawsuit.) On weekends, she would occasionally make the ten-hour drive, alone, to her second home in Tubac, Arizona. "So much of my life then was involved with my work," she observes. "I spent an inordinate amount of time consumed with all of that."

Which explains why she found herself starting a family as a single mom at the age of 50. The turning point came in 1990, when her father died of a brain tumor. "There was no way I could deny that life was moving on- the idea that a family could be postponed a second longer," she says. "I had to ask myself, 'Are you going to, or aren't you?"

A few years later, in 1995, Keaton adopted Dexter and they moved to Beverly Hills with two dogs and a nanny. Last year, she sold that house to Madonna for a reported $6.5 million. Until they locate a new residence, the family lives in a rented house that's littered with toys, baby supplies and dog gear. "We're all a bunch of gypsies," she laughs.

Keaton, a vegetarian, often cooks her favorite dish- penne with olive oil and onions- for dinner. She just sold the house in Tubac (the drive is too long for the kids) and is thinking about buying another on the beach. "They've changed me," she says of her children. "I have my priorities in order, and the separation between work and personal life is profoundly different." Actress Carol Kane, one of her best friends, agrees: "Diane has found her true loves for now: Duke and Dexter. It's funny, I just keep coming up with a simple statement: She's much happier."

When Keaton's not working or childrearing, you might find her surfing eBay to augment her collection of clown paintings and vintage scrapbooks. She's also a gifted photographer. Like her mother, she likes to compile magazine images that catch her eye, which she references when planning her own movie shoots.

Ten years down the line, Keaton wants to be doing what she's doing now. "I really hope I'm healthy," she says, "so that I can be vital in raising the kids." Beyond that, she wants to seize every opportunity. "I would say I'm just clutching on to as much life as I can until it's over," she laughs, playfully pantomiming a woman clinging desperately to a ledge. "I just keep holding on."

THE END