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Even before her dog almost dies, my conversation with Diane Keaton is disorderly. There is a lag on the line. Conversation halts and resumes like a delivery truck. I’d emailed questions but she didn’t review them. She wants to talk about entryways. Each response comes filled with qualifications. It’s enjoyable and nerve-wracking – and intelligent. She aims to escape her own interview.

Tinseltown’s Extremely Modest Celebrity

Now 77, the film industry’s most self-effacing star avoids video calls. Neither does her character in the Book Club 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 don’t see me,” she says, “or see them, because it becomes so strange, you know? I suppose I mean: it’s not terrible or anything, but it’s a little odd.” We both talk, stop, interrupt each other again, a collision of chatter. Indeed, 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 brief silence. “I believe 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

In any case, in Book Club: The Next Chapter, a sequel to the 2018 success, Keaton once again plays Diane, a woman in her 70s, clumsy, quirky, partial to men’s tailoring and broad hats. “We borrowed a bunch of ideas from her life,” says filmmaker Bill Holderman, who collaborated with his wife, Erin Simms, who speak to me over Zoom a few days later. Keaton did suggest they change her character’s name, says Simms. “Perhaps ‘Leslie’. But it was already the second day of shooting.”

In the first film, the widowed Diane hooks up with the actor. In the sequel, the four friends go to Italy for Fonda’s bridal shower. Expect big dinners, long montages (dresses, shops, unclad sculptures), endless double entendre and a surprisingly big part for Holby City’s Hugh Quarshie. And booze. 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 have a Lillet, or a chardonnay.” It’s now 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. Nevertheless, she’s eager to run with the fiction: “Perhaps then I’ll get a different kind 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.’ Ridiculous!”

Film’s Theme

The original Book Club made 8x its budget by catering to overlooked over-60s who loved Sex and the City. Its story saw all four women variously shaken by reading Fifty Shades of Grey; this time round, their homework is The Alchemist. It’s less integral to the plot. It touches about destiny. “Not something I ramble on about,” says Keaton, “because it’s an aspect of it, of what we all face.” A gnomic pause. “And then, sometimes, it’s kind of great.”

Regarding her character’s big speech about hanging on to youthful hopes? “I’m sort of addicted to getting in my car and cruising the streets of LA,” she says – again, a bit off-topic. “Which most people don’t do any more. And then getting out and snapping pictures of these shops and buildings that have been largely destroyed. They’re no longer there!”

Why are they so haunting? “Because life 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 not that at all! It’s just things fluctuating!”

I’m struggling slightly to picture it. Los Angeles is not, ultimately, a pedestrian city, unless you’re on your last legs. Anyone on the sidewalk is noticeable – the actress especially. Do people ever ask what she’s doing? “No, because they aren’t interested. For the most part, they’re just in a hurry and they’re not looking.”

Has she ever sneak into one of the buildings? “Oh, I can’t. Goodness, I’d be arrested because they’re secured! Are you hoping me to go to jail? That’d be better for you. You could write: ‘I was talking to Diane Keaton but then I heard she got thrown in jail cause she tried get inside old stores.’ Yeah! I imagine.”

Architecture Expert

Actually, Keaton is quite the architecture expert. She’s made more money flipping houses for clients (who include Madonna) than she has making movies. You can tell a lot about a society through its city design, she says.: “I believe 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 doors and posted photos of them to Instagram.

“Oh, my God. 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 empty? It makes you think about all the aspects that pretty much all of us experience. Such as: oh, I did that movie, but the different project was not working out very well, but then, y’know, something crept in.

“It’s just so interesting that we’re alive, that we’re here, and that the majority who are lucky have cars, which transport you all over the place. I adore my car.”

Which model does she have?

“So, I have a [Mercedes] G-wagon. I’m spoiled. I’m luxurious. I’m very upscale. It’s black. Yeah. 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’m not watching the road, I remember Mom used to tell me: ‘Diane, don’t do that. God, be careful. Focus forward. Don’t begin looking around when you’re driving.’ Yes.”

Distinct Character

If it’s not yet clear, speaking to Keaton is like listening to unused clips from Annie Hall delivered by carrier pigeon. She’s a singular actor in so many ways – her aversion to plastic procedures, for instance, and hair dye, 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 think the degree of similarity in the comparison of Diane as a person and Diane as an performer,” says Holderman, “is one-of-a-kind. Her way of being in the world, her innate nature. She is relentlessly in the moment, as a human and as an actor.”

One morning, they toured the Sistine Chapel together. “To observe her study 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 mundane, she’d still be hopping up to examine fixtures. “Many people who have that artistic sensibility, as they get older, become self-aware.” In some way, he says, she hasn’t.

Keaton is usually described as modest. That sort of downplays it. “Maybe she’d kill me for saying this,” says Holderman, carefully. “She is aware she’s a movie star, but I don’t believe she knows she’s a film icon. She’s just so in the moment of her experience and being that to reflect on the larger … There’s just no time or space for it.”

Early Life

Keaton was delivered in an LA suburb in 1946, the first of four kids for Dorothy and Jack Hall. Her father was an estate agent, her mother won the regional title in the Mrs America competition for accomplished housewives. Seeing her crowned on stage evoked a blend of satisfaction and envy in Keaton, who was eight at the time.

Dorothy was also a prolific – and unfulfilled – shutterbug, collagist, potter and diarist (85 volumes). Both of Keaton’s autobiographies, as well as her essay collection, are as much about her parent as, for example, {starring|appearing