.+.HIDE-AND-SEEK WITH DIANE KEATON.+.
Article by Dominic Dunne
Photographs by Annie Leibovitz
Vanity Fair - February 1985


COVER

   
Diane Keaton at home on Manhattan's Upper West Side with Whitey, one of her three cats.

Diane Keaton, the most reclusive star since Garbo, does not sit in positions of relaxation. All during our interview she seems poised for flight, one patent-leather-shod foot in constant motion as she goes reluctantly through this chore of stardom. A pile of curls bobs on her forehead when she speaks, and a single purple plastic hoop earring jiggles from her lobe. She is prettier than she photographs, and friendly, but wary. She pushes up, pulls down, then pushes up again the sleeves of her blouse, dying to be finished with the task at hand.

She lives in a glass aerie high above Central Park. Stepping off the elevator into the foyer outside her front door, one is immediately confronted with evidence of her unique style- a large, track-lit artwork, which, on closer inspection, turns out to be hundreds and hundreds of yellow plastic bananas, piled in a corner by the actress herself. The apartment is white on white on white- floor, ceiling, walls, kitchen tiles, furniture, even the thick diner cups and saucers- its starkness broken by several huge floor vases of flowers and by arrangements of art objects that have caught her eye, such as a plastic bust of Pope John Paul II that she found in a curio shop in Toronto, a trio of reindeer that she saw at a roadside stand while driving through Massachusetts, and a grouping of huge papier-mâché boulders that she got in a theatrical-prop shop. “I’m sort of a junk collector,” she tells me. “What I really needs is a warehouse. I like to change things around. For a while it’s fun to look at them, and then I don’t want to look at them anymore.” For the moment, at least, her critically admired collages and photographs have been packed away in a back room, and she is disinclined to let me see them. There is a sense of fastidious neatness throughout- no clutter, no books or pictures littering the tabletops- and, of course, her Academy Award is nowhere in sight. Her home is like an art gallery, with changing shows.

The apartment has a 360-degree view of the city; it looks down twenty floors onto the park’s sailing pond on one side, onto the copper-green turrets of the majestic Dakota on another, across the West Side to the Hudson River on the third, and smack into the windows of the matching twin-tower apartment of Mary Tyler Moore on the fourth.

“Do you wave to each other?” I ask.

“ Oh, no. We’ve never met,” she replies. “In fact, I’ve never even seen her.”

Since the place is high up, safe, spacious, and very private, I am surprised when she says it is on her mind to move. She explains that the large living room, with its thirties bamboo-and-canvas furniture, and the dining area, with its huge table and chairs on casters, are pleasant but functionless rooms for her kind of life. “I never entertain,” she says. She does, however, share the apartment with three large old cats, each with its own domain. She says she would like to own a loft or a building where she could have more room for work- a studio for her photography, space to edit her documentary films, and an office for her production company, where she could meet with writers to discuss projects. After nearly twenty years in New York, she tells me, she sometimes toys with the thought of returning to California to live. Then she breaks of, saying, “Listen, it’s cat-hair city here. You’re going to hate me when you leave.”

Keaton is much more at ease talking about other people, like Mel Gibson, the hot co-star of her latest movie, Mrs. Soffel, than about herself. “it was not difficult for me to imagine what it was like to be hopelessly in love with Mel,” she says. “It was wonderful for me to play opposite him. I didn’t have any idea how much emotional range he had.”

Mrs. Soffel is, according to her, "a big love story," based on a true event that took place in Pittsburgh in 1901. Keaton, who plays the wife of a prison warden, gives an extraordinary and disturbing performance as a fervently religious woman who falls madly, hopelessly in love with a condemned bank robber so handsome that women wait outside the prison to send gifts in to him by the guards. Without thought of consequence, she helps the outlaw and his brother to escape and then willingly forsakes husband, children, and reputation to accompany the pair on an ill-fated three-day race with death. The part is shocking and fascinating and a risky one for a star. Who could care about a woman who does what Mrs. Soffel does? As Diane Keaton plays the part, you may not approve, but you do understand.

She loved the role. "The idea of playing someone who had never been touched emotionally or romantically in her whole life and then gives way to an urge so strong that she cannot help herself- all the terror and excitement of it was wonderful for me." The smoldering presence of Gibson combines with Keaton's enigmatic and elusive quality to create the kind of sexual sparks that are rarely seen on the screen.

During the long and arduous shooting in Canada in twenty-degree weather, the two stars admired each other’s talent but did not socialize together in their free time. “I never got to know Mel very well,” says Keaton. “I wanted to keep a distance from being friendly with him. If you start hanging out together you lose the kind of tension it takes to play a part like that.”

With Reds, Shoot the Moon, The Little Drummer Girl, and Mrs. Soffel, Diane Keaton has put her Annie Hall image to rest forever. Gone is every vestige of the beloved character created by Woody Allen and based on her own skittish and jittery personality. At thirty-nine, she is a major star at the peak of her talent.

“She is the dream actress that every director should have,” says Gillian Armstrong, the Australian director of My Brilliant Career, who made her American directorial debut with Mrs. Soffel. “In a practical sense she is absolutely professional. There’s none of that sort of star business about being late or not turning up or staying out all night, or any of those things. She is absolutely dedicated and hardworking, and she gave me the same intensity in take after take.”

Working back-to-back on The Little Drummer Girl and Mrs. Soffel meant being out of the country on distant locations for nearly a year. “I don’t want to do that ever again,” says Keaton. “I don’t want to go away and work for months and months and move every two weeks to another hotel in another country and be away from people that I love. I don’t want to do that. I felt like I’d left my life for quite some time. I felt alone.”

After a series of heavily dramatic roles, she longs to play comedy again, but finding the right script has not been easy. “I was spoiled by Woody,” she says. At the age of twenty-three, she was cast by Allen in the stage version of Play It Again, Sam, and she later acted the same role on the screen. She also appeared with him in Sleeper, Love and Death, and the brilliant Annie Hall, for which she received an Academy Award in 1978. Her relationship with Woody Allen, both professional and romantic, remains a pivotal part of her career and life. Long apart, they have managed to maintain their friendship even through other relationships, including Allen’s long liaison with Mia Farrow.

“In the comedy zone there’s nobody like Woody,” she continues. “I just had great roles. I would love more than anything to do a comedy again. I’d love it. But for some reason, I don’t know. . .” Her voice drifts off.

So far her own attempts at developing a comedy for herself have not been successful. The most promising was called Modern Bride, a romantic comedy about a thirty-six-year-old woman who is getting married for the first time just as her parents are getting divorced. She would have co-produced and starred, but after several attempts at the script, including one by Nora Ephron and Alice Arlen and another by John Sayles, the project fell into abeyance.

Another film idea, a comedy about friendship, would start Keaton with two close friends, the actresses Kathryn Grody (wife of actor Mandy Patinkin) and Carol Kane, whom she met when the three of them were in the film Harry and Walter Go to New York. “I’m going to stick with trying to do something with these projects, but to be honest with you,” says Keaton wistfully, “I think my skills as a producer, or a person who is able to get a movie together and get it on, and actually realize it are. . .uh. . .it’s not my. . .uh. . .gift, or, I don’t think I have those capabilities in putting people together to make it happen. Now, there’s a long sentence.”
When talking about herself, she sometimes borders on the inarticulate, expressing self-doubt, stopping, starting, changing direction, interrupting her thoughts, advancing in disorder.

“I’m not going to quit,” she says “I’m going to continue to try to be in a movie that’s funny. I’d love to do something with Woody and Mia.” She jumps from the sofa and looks out the window.

“These serious movies are hard on me. I find acting not. . .uh. . .not. . .uh. . .oh, I don’t know. It’s hard. It’s very hard, and it brings out things in me that I don’t like, which is. . .uh. . .steady, constant worry. I just worry every day. Am I O.K.? Am I all right? Look. . .I don’t want to say that it’s not a privilege, and it’s not something I don’t want to do, because I do like doing it, really, but I’m glad I’m not doing it right now.”
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