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Even before her canine companion almost dies, my call with the acclaimed actress is chaotic. There’s a delay on the line. Dialogue halts and resumes like a delivery truck. I had sent questions but she hasn’t read them. She desires to talk about doors. Each response comes filled with caveats. It’s enjoyable and stressful – and smart. She wants to escape her own interview.

Hollywood’s Extremely Modest Celebrity

Currently 77, the film industry’s most humble star avoids video calls. Nor does her role in the literary group films, the newest of which begins with her struggling to speak via her computer to best friends played by Jane Fonda, Mary Steenburgen and Candice Bergen.

“It’s always better when you don’t see me,” she says, “or see them, because it turns quite odd, you know? I guess I mean: it’s not that bad or anything, but it’s a little odd.” We both talk, stop, interrupt each other again, a car crash of chatter. Yes, phone is so much better, I say, and if there’s any nicer sound than Diane Keaton laughing at your joke, I’d like to hear it.

A pause. “I think a little goes plenty,” she says. “That is, don’t do much more.” Not for the last time, I’m uncertain what she meant.

Book Club Sequel

In any case, in Book Club: The Next Chapter, a follow-up to the 2018 hit, Keaton again plays Diane, a woman in her 70s, clumsy, eccentric, fond of men’s tailoring and wide-brimmed hats. “We borrowed a bunch of ideas from her life,” says director Bill Holderman, who collaborated 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 bereaved Diane hooks up with Andy García. In the sequel, the four companions go to Italy for Fonda’s bachelorette party. Cue big dinners, long montages (dresses, shops, unclad sculptures), endless innuendo and a surprisingly big part for the show’s Hugh Quarshie. And booze. So much drink.

I was impressed by the drinking, I say; is it true to life? “Absolutely,” says Keaton gamely. “About six in the morning I’ll drink a Lillet, or a chardonnay.” It’s now 11am; how many bottles down is she? “Oh God, maybe 25?”

Actually, Keaton has put her name to a white blend and a red variety, but both are intended to be drunk over a tumbler of ice – not the recommended way of the really hardened wino. Nevertheless, she’s keen to embrace the fiction: “Perhaps then I’ll get a new type of part. ‘They say Diane Keaton is a heavy drinker and you can easily influence her. It simplifies things if she just stays quiet and drinks.’ Ridiculous!”

Movie’s Focus

The first Book Club made eight times its cost by serving undercatered 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’s less integral to the plot. It touches about fatalism. “Nothing I ramble on about,” says Keaton, “because it’s an aspect of it, of what we all deal with.” A cryptic silence. “And then, sometimes, it’s quite great.”

What about her character’s big speech about holding onto youthful hopes? “I’m sort of addicted to getting in my car and driving through the streets of LA,” she says – again, a bit tangentially. “A habit most people don’t do any more. And then exiting and photographing these shops and buildings that have been just decimated. 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 could be. But it’s far from it! It’s just things going up and down!”

I’m struggling slightly to visualize it. Los Angeles is not, ultimately, a walkable metropolis, unless you’re on your uppers. Anybody on the sidewalk is noticeable – the actress particularly. Do people ever ask what she is up to? “No, because they aren’t interested. Generally, they’re just in a rush and they’re not looking.”

Has she ever snuck inside one of the buildings? “Oh, I can’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 heard she got incarcerated because she tried get inside old stores.’ Yes! I bet.”

Building Aficionado

Actually, Keaton is quite the architecture specialist. She has earned more money renovating properties for patrons (who include Madonna) than she has making movies. You can tell a lot about a community through its urban planning, she says.: “I think they’re more present 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 doors and shared photos of them to Instagram.

“Goodness gracious. I adore doors. Uh-huh. Actually, I’m gazing at them right now.” She likes to imagine the exits and entrances, “the people 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. Such as: 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 the majority who are lucky have cars, which take you all over the place. I love my car.”

What type does she have?

“Well, I have a [Mercedes] G-wagon. I’m a bitch. I’m fancy. I’m really fancy. It’s a black car. Yes. It’s quite nice though. I enjoy it.”

Is she a speeder? “No. What I prefer to do is look, so I can have issues with that, when I neglect the road, I recall Mom used to tell me: ‘Diane, don’t do that. Heavens, watch out. Look ahead. Don’t begin looking around when you’re driving.’ Yes.”

Distinct Character

If it’s not yet clear, talking with Keaton is like hearing outtakes from the classic film 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 turtleneck, makes for a dramatic contrast with some of her film co-stars. But most disarming today is how indistinguishable she seems from her screen self.

“I believe the degree of overlap in the comparison of Diane as a individual and Diane as an actor,” says Holderman, “is unique. Her way of being in the world, her innate nature. She remains relentlessly in the moment, as a person and as an artist.”

On a particular day, they toured the Sistine Chapel together. “To watch her observe the world is to understand who Diane Keaton is,” he says. “She is truly fascinated. She possesses all of that depth in her soul.” Even in more ordinary, she’d still be hopping up to examine light fittings. “Many people who have that artistic sensibility, as they get older, become self-aware.” In some way, he says, she has not.

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

Early Life

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 regional title in the Mrs America contest for skilled housewives. Watching her honored on stage evoked a blend of satisfaction and envy in Keaton, who was eight at the time.

Dorothy was also a productive – and frustrated – photographer, collage artist, ceramicist and diarist (85 volumes). Each of Keaton’s autobiographies, as well as her essay collection, are as much about her parent as, say, {starring|appearing