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Right before her dog almost dies, my call with the acclaimed actress is disorderly. There is a lag on the line. Dialogue stops and starts like a delivery truck. I’d emailed questions but she didn’t review them. She desires to talk about entryways. Every answer comes filled with qualifications. It’s enjoyable and stressful – and smart. She aims to escape her own interview.

Tinseltown’s Most Self-Effacing Star

Currently 77, Hollywood’s most humble star doesn’t do video calls. Nor does her character in the Book Club films, the newest of which starts with her struggling to speak via her computer to close companions played by the renowned actress, Mary Steenburgen and Candice Bergen.

“It’s preferable when you avoid seeing me,” she says, “or see them, because it turns quite odd, you know? I guess I mean: it’s not terrible or anything, but it’s a little odd.” We both talk, stop, talk over each other again, a car crash of chatter. Indeed, phone is so much better, I say, and if there’s any more pleasant 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

In any case, in Book Club: The Next Chapter, a sequel to the 2018 success, Keaton again plays Diane, a woman in her 70s, bumbling, quirky, fond of men’s tailoring and wide-brimmed hats. “We borrowed a bunch of ideas from her life,” says director Bill Holderman, who co-wrote with his wife, Erin Simms, who talk with me over Zoom a few days later. Keaton did suggest they change her character’s name, says Simms. “Something like ‘Leslie’. But it was by then the second day of shooting.”

In the first film, the bereaved Diane connects with Andy García. In the follow-up, the four friends go to Italy for Fonda’s bridal shower. Cue big dinners, long sequences (dresses, shops, unclad sculptures), endless double entendre and a surprisingly big part for Holby City’s Hugh Quarshie. And alcohol. So much drink.

I felt amazed by the drinking, I say; is it true to life? “Absolutely,” says Keaton enthusiastically. “About six in the morning I’ll drink a Lillet, or a chardonnay.” Currently 11am; how many glasses consumed is she? “Oh God, maybe 25?”

In fact, Keaton has launched a white and a red variety, but both are intended to be drunk over a tumbler of ice – not the recommended way of the truly seasoned wino. Still, she’s keen to embrace the fiction: “Maybe then I’ll get a new type of part. ‘They say Diane Keaton is a big consumer and you can easily influence her. It makes it much easier if she just shuts up and drinks.’ Ridiculous!”

Movie’s Focus

The original Book Club made 8x its budget by catering to overlooked over-60s who adored Sex and the City. Its plot saw all four women variously affected by reading Fifty Shades of Grey; this time round, their assigned reading is The Alchemist. It’s less integral to the plot. It touches about fatalism. “Nothing I dwell about,” says Keaton, “because it’s all part of it, of what we all face.” A gnomic pause. “Moreover, sometimes, it’s kind of great.”

Regarding her character’s big monologue about holding onto youthful hopes? “I’m somewhat addicted to getting in my car and driving through the streets of LA,” she says – again, a bit tangentially. “Which most people avoid any more. And then exiting and snapping pictures of these shops and buildings that have been largely destroyed. They aren’t there!”

Why are they so haunting? “Because life is haunting! You have an idea in your mind of what it is, or what it ought to be, or what it could be. But it’s not that at all! It’s just things going up and down!”

I’m struggling slightly to picture it. Los Angeles is not, ultimately, a walkable metropolis, unless you’re on your last legs. Anyone on the sidewalk stands out – Diane Keaton especially. Do people ever ask what she is up to? “No, because they don’t care. For the most part, they’re just in a hurry 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 secured! You want me to go to jail? That would be better for you. You can use this: ‘I spoke to Diane Keaton but then I learned she got incarcerated cause she tried enter old stores.’ Yeah! I imagine.”

Building Aficionado

Actually, Keaton is a true architecture specialist. She’s made more money renovating properties for patrons (who include Madonna) than she has making movies. One can discern a lot about a society through its city design, she says.: “I think they’re more evident in Italy. They feel more there with you. It’s just so different from things here. It’s less frantic.” While filming, she saw a lot of entryways and shared photos of them to Instagram.

“Goodness gracious. Oh, I love doors. Uh-huh. In fact, I’m looking 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 experience. Like: oh, I did that movie, but the different project was not succeeding very well, but then, you know, something snuck in.

“It’s just so interesting that we’re alive, that we’re here, and that most of us who are fortunate have cars, which take you all over the place. I love my car.”

Which model does she have?

“Well, I have a [Mercedes] G-wagon. I’m spoiled. I’m luxurious. I’m really fancy. It’s black. Yes. It’s pretty good though. I enjoy it.”

Is she a speeder? “No. What I like to do is observe, so I can get in trouble with that, when I’m not watching the road, I remember Mom used to tell me: ‘Diane, avoid that. Heavens, watch out. Focus forward. Don’t start looking around when you’re driving.’ Yeah.”

Distinct Character

If it’s not yet clear, talking with Keaton is like listening to unused clips from Annie Hall 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 Book Club co-stars. But most disarming today is how indistinguishable she seems from her screen self.

“I think the amount of similarity in the comparison of Diane as a person and Diane as an performer,” says Holderman, “is unique. How she exists in the world, how she’s wired. She remains constantly in the moment, as a person and as an artist.”

One morning, they visited the Sistine Chapel together. “To observe her observe the world is to comprehend who Diane Keaton is,” he says. “She is genuinely fascinated. She possesses all of that depth in her soul.” Even in more mundane, she’d still be hopping up to examine fixtures. “Many people who have that artistic sensibility, as they get older, become conscious of themselves.” Somehow, he says, she has not.

Keaton is generally described as modest. That somewhat underplays it. “Maybe she’d be upset for saying this,” says Holderman, carefully. “She knows she’s a celebrity, 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 ponder the larger … There’s just no time or space for it.”

Background

Keaton was delivered in an LA outskirt in 1946, the eldest of four kids for Dorothy and Jack Hall. Dad was an estate agent, her mother earned the regional title in the Mrs America contest for accomplished housewives. Seeing her honored on stage evoked a mix of satisfaction and jealousy in Keaton, who was eight at the time.

Dorothy was also a productive – and unfulfilled – photographer, collagist, ceramicist and diarist (85 volumes). Each of Keaton’s memoirs, as well as her essay collection, are as much about her mother as, for example, {starring|appearing