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Right before her dog nearly passes away, my conversation with Diane Keaton is chaotic. There is a lag on the line. Conversation stops and starts like a milk float. I’d emailed questions but she hasn’t read them. She wants to talk about entryways. Each response comes filled with qualifications. It’s enjoyable and stressful – and intelligent. She aims to escape her own interview.

Tinseltown’s Extremely Modest Celebrity

Currently 77, Hollywood’s most self-effacing star doesn’t do video calls. Nor does her role in the literary group films, the newest of which begins with her having difficulty to speak via her laptop to close companions played by Jane Fonda, Mary Steenburgen and Candice Bergen.

“It’s preferable when you avoid seeing me,” she says, “or see them, because it becomes so strange, you know? I suppose I mean: it’s not that bad or anything, but it’s a little odd.” We converse, stop, talk over each other again, a collision of chatter. Indeed, phone is so much better, I say, and if there’s any nicer sound than the star laughing at your joke, I’d like to hear it.

A pause. “I believe a little goes plenty,” she says. “I mean, don’t do much more.” Not for the last time, I’m not exactly sure what she meant.

Follow-Up Film

Anyway, in the sequel to Book Club, a sequel to the 2018 success, Keaton once again plays Diane, a woman in her 70s, clumsy, eccentric, partial to men’s tailoring and broad hats. “We stole a bunch of ideas from her life,” says director Bill Holderman, who co-wrote with his wife, Erin Simms, who speak to me over Zoom a few days later. Keaton did propose they change her character’s name, says Simms. “Something like ‘Leslie’. But it was already the second day of shooting.”

In the original movie, the widowed Diane hooks up with the actor. In the sequel, the four friends go to Italy for Fonda’s bridal shower. Cue big dinners, long montages (frocks, shops, unclad sculptures), endless double entendre and a surprisingly big part for Holby City’s Hugh Quarshie. And booze. So much booze.

I was impressed by the drinking, I say; is it accurate? “Oh yeah,” says Keaton enthusiastically. “Around 6 in the morning I’ll have a Lillet, or a chardonnay.” Currently 11am; how many glasses consumed is she? “Oh God, maybe 25?”

Actually, Keaton has put her name to a white blend and a red variety, but both are designed to be drunk over a glass of ice – not the serving suggestion of the truly seasoned wino. Still, she’s eager to embrace the fiction: “Perhaps then I’ll get a new type of part. ‘I hear Diane Keaton is a big consumer and you can easily influence her. It makes it much easier if she just stays quiet and drinks.’ Absurd!”

Film’s Theme

The first Book Club made 8x its cost by catering to overlooked over-60s who adored Sex and the City. Its story saw all four women variously affected by reading Fifty Shades of Grey; in this installment, their homework is The Alchemist. It plays a smaller role to the plot. There’s some stuff about fatalism. “Not something I dwell about,” says Keaton, “because it’s an aspect of it, of what we all deal with.” A cryptic silence. “Moreover, sometimes, it’s kind of great.”

What about her character’s big monologue about hanging on to youthful hopes? “I’m somewhat addicted to getting in my car and driving through the streets of LA,” she says – once more, a bit tangentially. “Which most people don’t do any more. And then exiting and photographing these stores and structures that have been largely destroyed. They aren’t there!”

What makes them so haunting? “Because existence is haunting! You have an idea in your mind of what it is, or what it ought to be, or what it might become. But it’s not that at all! It’s just things going up and down!”

I’m struggling slightly to visualize it. LA is not, ultimately, a pedestrian city, unless you’re on your uppers. Anyone on the pavement is noticeable – the actress particularly. Do people ever ask what she is up to? “No, because they don’t care. Generally, they’re just in a rush and they’re not looking.”

Did she ever sneak into one of the buildings? “No, I couldn’t. Goodness, I’d be thrown in jail because they’re locked up! Are you hoping me to go to jail? That would be better for you. You could write: ‘I spoke to Diane Keaton but then I learned she got incarcerated because she tried get inside old stores.’ Yeah! I bet.”

Architecture Expert

In reality, Keaton is a true architecture expert. She has earned more money flipping houses for clients (who include Madonna) than she has making movies. One can discern a lot about a society through its city design, she says.: “I believe they’re more present in Italy. They feel more there with you. It’s entirely different from things here. It’s less frantic.” While filming, she saw a lot of doors and shared photos of them to Instagram.

“Goodness gracious. Oh, I love doors. Yes. Actually, I’m gazing at them right now.” She enjoys to imagine the exits and entrances, “the individuals who lived there or what they offered or why is it empty? It makes you think about all the facets that pretty much all of us go through. Like: oh, I did that movie, but the other one was not succeeding very well, but then, y’know, something crept in.

“It’s truly interesting that we’re living, that we’re here, and that most of us who are fortunate have cars, which transport you all over the place. I adore my car.”

Which model does she have?

“Well, I have a [Mercedes] G-wagon. I’m spoiled. I’m luxurious. I’m very upscale. It’s a black car. Yeah. It’s pretty good though. I like it.”

Is she a speeder? “No. What I like to do is look, so I can have issues with that, when I neglect the road, I remember Mom used to tell me: ‘Diane, don’t do that. God, be careful. Look ahead. Don’t start gazing about when you’re driving.’ Yes.”

Distinct Character

If it’s not yet clear, talking with Keaton is like listening to outtakes from the classic film sent via carrier pigeon. She’s a singular actor in so many ways – her dislike to cosmetic surgery, for instance, and coloring, and anything more exposing than a turtleneck, creates a stark difference with some of her film co-stars. But most charming today is how similar she seems from her on-screen persona.

“I believe the degree of overlap in the Venn diagram of Diane as a person and Diane as an performer,” says Holderman, “is unique. Her way of being in the world, her innate nature. She remains constantly in the moment, as a human and as an artist.”

One morning, they visited the Sistine Chapel together. “To observe her study the world is to comprehend who Diane Keaton is,” he says. “She is truly fascinated. She possesses all of that depth in her being.” Even somewhere more mundane, she’d still be jumping to examine light fittings. “A lot of people who have that creative instinct, as they get older, become conscious of themselves.” In some way, he says, she hasn’t.

Keaton is usually described as self-deprecating. That sort of downplays it. “Maybe she’d be upset for saying this,” says Holderman, cautiously. “She knows she’s a movie star, but I don’t think she knows she’s a movie star. She’s just so in the moment of her experience and being that to reflect on the larger … There is no time or space for it.”

Background

Keaton was born in an LA suburb in 1946, the eldest of four kids for Dorothy and Jack Hall. Dad was an real estate broker, her mother won the regional title in the Mrs America competition for skilled housewives. Watching her crowned on stage evoked a blend of pride and envy in Keaton, who was eight at the time.

Dorothy was also a prolific – and frustrated – photographer, collagist, potter and diarist (85 volumes). Each of Keaton’s memoirs, as well as her writings, are as much about her parent as, for example, {starring|appearing