Diane Keaton, the septuagenarian who has won generations of admirers over the course of her almost 60-year career, is a master of many things on film.
Off-screen, the Hollywood “it girl” was a “master at hiding,” keeping dark secrets as a young lady that she now acknowledges is “creepy.”
Diane Keaton, 77, is an icon with a nearly six-decade career as one of Hollywood’s most renowned leading women.
When Woody Allen noticed her in 1968 while she was an understudy for a main part in the hippie musical Hair, he cast her as his love interest in the Broadway play Play it Again, Sam (1969).
Her portrayal of Linda Christie, which she performed in the 1972 film adaptation of the same name, garnered her first and only Tony nomination when she was 23 years old.
Her real-life romance with Allen lasted only a few years, mirroring her character’s brief stage affair with Woody Allen, despite the fact that they worked together on multiple films over the following couple of decades.
Following a few modest roles in films, TV shows, and advertisements, the award-winning actress landed her breakout role in The Godfather.
In the Oscar-winning picture with unprecedented commercial and critical success, Keaton’s career as an actress rose tremendously as the girlfriend, eventually wife, of Michael Corleone (Al Pacino).
She resumes her role as the estranged wife of Al Pacino’s character, the head of a criminal organization, with whom she had an on-again, off-again romance, in 1974.
“I was crazy over him.” Charming, hilarious, and a never-ending talker,” Keaton tells People, confessing she had a crush on Pacino before they began dating. “There was a part of him that felt like a lost orphan, like this crazy idiot savant.” And, oh, so lovely!”
Her reunion with Allen in Annie Hall (1977) garnered her an Academy Award and a Golden Globe.
Keaton co-starred and directed with Warren Beatty in several box office blockbusters, including Looking for Mr. Goodbar, Manhattan, and 1981’s Reds. “I first saw Warren in Splendor in the Grass (1961).” Come on, people! I mean, he was to die for. A fantasy. What about Bonnie and Clyde? “Come on,” she urged in a Variety interview. “And not only was he beautiful, gorgeous, sexy, captivating, mysterious, and a great movie star, but he was also an incredible producer and director, or rather, is an incredible producer and director. “Everything about this is one-of-a-kind.”
As her career progressed, she portrayed the mother in Father of the Bride (1991) with Steve Martin, Manhattan Murder Mystery (her first with Allen since Annie Hall), and The Godfather Part III as the divorced wife of the mafia ruler in 2000.
In 2003, she starred in Something’s Gotta Give, for which she received an Academy Award nomination, and the picture became her first box office smash since 1996’s First Wives Club, starring Bette Midler and Goldie Hawn.
Her co-stars praise her work as a consummate professional. “She’s nothing if not fascinating, and working with her, she’s very unpredictable, which I like,” Jack Nicholson, who co-starred in Something’s Gotta Give alongside Keaton, remarked. “She’s very disciplined about everything.” She approaches a screenplay like a play in that she memorizes the entire script before beginning the film, something I’m not aware of any other performers doing.”
Unlike her character in the film, who falls in love with her daughter’s older lover (Nicholson), Keaton adores her much younger co-star, Keanu Reeves.
Keaton told the Sydney Morning Herald of her on-screen kisses with Reeves, who is 20 years her junior. “It was pretty embarrassing, and for Keanu, too.” It has to do with the passage of time. It’s instinctual; (when kissing him), you think to yourself, ‘Uh, probably not!'” “And Keanu was going, ‘Definitely not!'” the delightful actor said. He was attempting to be courteous. But he’s just stunningly handsome. It was a sinful delight. “A guilty pleasure.”
Neither actor has acknowledged claims that they were romantically connected outside of the spotlight.
Keaton, who leads with humility, is a supporter of natural aging and is proud of her silvery hair and looks like a lady in her late 70s.
“I remind myself that I’m free to do anything I want with my body. So why not? I may be a parody of my previous self; in the summer, I still wear wide-belted plaid jackets, horn-rimmed spectacles, and turtlenecks. What is the point? Nobody cares but me,” she told the Daily Beast in an interview. “I see nothing wrong with facelifts, Botox, or fillers.” They just remove the unseen battle scars. I’m going to wear mine, sort of.”
Though she is one of Hollywood’s most acclaimed performers, screenwriters, directors, and singers, she is not immune to uninvited public criticism.
Following her appearance at the 2014 Golden Globes, an internet user attacked her with the message, “Wow. Diane Keaton gained weight.”
“Well, Diane Keaton isn’t nice; she’s ugly inside and out!” observed another reviewer recently, seemingly without provocation.
What must be realized is that the stunning celebrity, who has an incredible lean frame, is in rehabilitation from a poisonous connection with food.
Keaton confessed on the Dr. Oz Show, “It was horrible.” Of course, it was the lowest period of my life. I was a large, obese person who had somehow deceived and concealed herself. So, after four years of living with a falsehood, “All I did was feed my hunger, so I am an addict,” she added, explaining her fight with bulimia. That is correct. I’m a recovering addict who will always be an addict. “I have an addictive personality.”
Her concerns were sparked early in her career when she was offered the lead in Hair in return for shedding 10 pounds. The company also offered an additional $50 to performers who agreed to strip naked at the end of Act 1. Keaton declined.
She ate a lot to deal with the stress. Then she puked, emptying her stomach of everything she had eaten.
She would eat 20,000 calories at each meal, which included “a bucket of fried chicken, several orders of fries with blue cheese and ketchup, a couple of TV dinners, a quart of soda, pounds of candy, a whole cake, and three banana cream pies.”
She recognized she had a problem and worked with a therapist five times a week for a year to address her binge eating condition.
“It’s now work-related or trying to raise my children as best I can, even though they’re not really children anymore,” Keaton said of her adoptive children.
Woody Allen joked about her weight condition, which she hid from him when they were dating, while roasting his multi-talented buddy at the 2017 American Film Awards dinner, where Keaton was given a Lifetime Achievement Award.
“I didn’t know many things until I read her books,” Allen remarked. “I had no idea she was bulimic… I’d take her to these high-end eateries. Dinner costs $400. I could have brought her to Pizza Hut if I had known she was vomiting up.”
Though Keaton was among the celebrities who burst out laughing, her bulimia was extremely serious for her.
Insisting that she did not lose weight to suit the expectations of the hair makers, Keaton stated that she maintained her weight and “became a master at hiding. “How do you keep any evidence hidden such that no one knows? You have a pretty unusual way of life. You’re deceiving yourself.”
“People were nice enough, but I felt like an outsider,” she continues. “I had a problem that was both sick and creepy.” Bulimia consumes a significant amount of your time.”
The star of rom-com royalty, who has never married, enjoys parenthood. Keaton has a 27-year-old daughter, Dexter Keaton White, and a 23-year-old son, Duke Keaton, whom she adopted while she was in her 50s.
“I didn’t think I was ever going to be ready to be a mother.” Motherhood was not a strong desire I couldn’t shake but rather a long-held concept. “So I dove in,” she explained.
Keaton lives in a self-constructed heaven, a farmhouse-style brick palace that she planned and built to balance her demanding filmmaking schedule. Inspired by her Pinterest infatuation and her love of the “Three Little Pigs,” Keaton reveals the concept and building process behind her rustic-chic home in her book, “The House that Pinterest Built.”
Keaton’s home is described as a “fireproof, earth-resistant, water-resistant, walled-in compound” made of “75,000 handpicked clay bricks” by Est, an architectural design journal. ” At the age of five, the actress recalls being read “The “Three Little Pigs,” and she knew she wanted to live in a brick house “when she grew up,” according to the magazine. “While many of us can relate to scrolling through Pinterest, few can say their entire home was built from a collection of its images.” But, hey, we’re not Diane Keaton. “This one-of-a-kind detail is an uncommon and difficult achievement.”
Diane Keaton’s impressive list of accomplishments includes roles as an actress, singer, author, director, mother, and designer.
She is a terrific person, and we appreciate her candor in revealing her eating condition. The mirror may be our worst critic, and we wish Keaton all the best in her future endeavors!