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Even before her dog almost dies, my call with the acclaimed actress is chaotic. There is a lag on the line. Dialogue halts and resumes like a delivery truck. I’d emailed questions but she didn’t review them. She wants to talk about doors. Every answer comes stacked with caveats. It’s fun and nerve-wracking – and smart. She aims to escape her own interview.

Tinseltown’s Most Self-Effacing Star

Currently 77, the film industry’s most self-effacing star avoids video calls. Nor does her character in the literary group films, the newest of which starts 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 turns quite odd, you know? I suppose I mean: it’s not terrible or anything, but it’s a bit unusual.” 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 Diane Keaton laughing at your joke, I’d like to hear it.

A brief silence. “I think a little goes plenty,” she says. “That is, don’t do much more.” Once again, I’m not exactly sure what she meant.

Book Club Sequel

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, fond of men’s tailoring and broad hats. “We borrowed a bunch of ideas from her life,” says filmmaker Bill Holderman, who co-wrote with his wife, Erin Simms, who talk with me over Zoom a few days later. Keaton did propose 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 widowed Diane connects with Andy García. In the sequel, the four friends go to Italy for Fonda’s bachelorette party. Expect big dinners, long montages (frocks, shops, naked statues), endless innuendo and a remarkably large part for the show’s Hugh Quarshie. And booze. So much booze.

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.” It’s now 11am; how many bottles down is she? “Goodness, maybe 25?”

Actually, Keaton has launched a white blend and a red, but both are intended to be drunk over a tumbler of ice – not the serving suggestion of the truly seasoned wino. Nevertheless, she’s keen to embrace the fiction: “Maybe then I’ll get a new type of part. ‘I hear Diane Keaton is a heavy drinker and you can really push her around. It simplifies things if she just stays quiet and drinks.’ Absurd!”

Film’s Theme

The first Book Club made eight times its budget by serving undercatered over-60s who loved Sex and the City. Its story saw all four women differently 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 destiny. “Nothing I dwell about,” says Keaton, “because it’s an aspect of it, of what we all face.” A cryptic silence. “Moreover, sometimes, it’s kind of great.”

Regarding her character’s big speech about holding onto youthful hopes? “I’m somewhat addicted to getting in my car and cruising the streets of LA,” she says – once more, a bit off-topic. “Which most people don’t do any more. And then exiting and photographing these stores and buildings that have been largely destroyed. They aren’t there!”

Why are they so eerie? “Because existence is unsettling! 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 picture it. LA is not, ultimately, a pedestrian city, unless you’re on your last legs. Anybody on the pavement stands out – the actress particularly. Do people ever ask what she is up to? “No, because they don’t care. Generally, they’re just in a hurry and they’re not looking.”

Has she ever snuck inside one of the buildings? “No, I couldn’t. Goodness, I’d be thrown in jail because they’re secured! Are you hoping me to go to jail? That would be better for you. You could write: ‘I was talking to Diane Keaton but then I heard she got incarcerated because she tried enter old stores.’ Yeah! I bet.”

Building Aficionado

In reality, Keaton is quite the architecture expert. She has earned more money renovating properties for patrons (who include Madonna) than she has making movies. One can discern a lot about a community through its city design, she says.: “I think they’re more evident in Italy. They feel more there with you. It’s entirely different from things here. It’s not as driven.” During the shoot, 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 gazing at them right now.” She enjoys to imagine the comings and goings, “the people who lived there or what they sold or why is it vacant? It makes you think about all the facets that pretty much all of us go through. Like: oh, I did that movie, but the different project was not succeeding very well, but then, you know, something crept 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 a bitch. I’m fancy. I’m very upscale. It’s black. Yeah. It’s quite nice though. I like it.”

Is she a speeder? “No. What I prefer to do is look, 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, be careful. Look ahead. Don’t begin gazing about when you’re driving.’ Yes.”

Distinct Character

In case 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 aversion to cosmetic surgery, for instance, and hair dye, and anything more revealing than a roll-neck, creates a dramatic contrast with some of her film co-stars. But most disarming today is how similar she seems from her screen self.

“I believe the amount of similarity in the Venn diagram of Diane as a individual and Diane as an performer,” says Holderman, “is unique. How she exists in the world, her innate nature. She remains constantly in the moment, as a human and as an actor.”

One morning, they toured the Sistine Chapel together. “To watch her observe the world is to comprehend who Diane Keaton is,” he says. “She is genuinely fascinated. She has all of that depth in her soul.” Even in more ordinary, 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.” Somehow, he says, she hasn’t.

Keaton is usually described as modest. That sort of downplays it. “Perhaps 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 film icon. She’s just so in the moment of her life and being that to ponder the larger … There’s just no time or space for it.”

Background

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

Dorothy was also a productive – and frustrated – photographer, collagist, potter and journal keeper (85 volumes). Both of Keaton’s autobiographies, as well as her essay collection, are as much about her parent as, for example, {starring|appearing