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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. Dialogue stops and starts like a milk float. I had sent questions but she hasn’t read them. She wants to talk about doors. Every answer comes stacked with qualifications. It’s fun and stressful – and smart. She aims to evade her own interview.

Tinseltown’s Most Self-Effacing Celebrity

Currently 77, the film industry’s most self-effacing star avoids video calls. Nor does her character in the Book Club films, the latest of which begins with her struggling to speak via her laptop to close companions played by the renowned actress, Mary Steenburgen and Candice Bergen.

“It’s always better 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 converse, stop, talk over each other again, a collision 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.” Once again, 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 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 collaborated 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. “Perhaps ‘Leslie’. But it was by then the second day of shooting.”

In the first film, the widowed Diane connects with Andy García. In the follow-up, the four companions go to Italy for Fonda’s bachelorette party. Cue big dinners, long sequences (dresses, shops, unclad sculptures), endless innuendo and a surprisingly big part for Holby City’s Hugh Quarshie. And booze. So much booze.

I felt amazed by the drinking, I say; is it accurate? “Absolutely,” says Keaton gamely. “Around 6 in the morning I’ll drink a Lillet, or a chardonnay.” Currently 11am; how many bottles down is she? “Oh God, maybe 25?”

Actually, Keaton has launched a white blend and a red, but both are intended to be drunk over a glass of ice – not the serving suggestion of the really hardened wino. Nevertheless, she’s keen to run with the fiction: “Perhaps then I’ll get a different kind of part. ‘They say Diane Keaton is a heavy drinker and you can easily influence her. It makes it much easier if she just stays quiet and drinks.’ Ridiculous!”

Movie’s Focus

The original Book Club made 8x its budget by serving overlooked over-60s who adored Sex and the City. Its story saw all four women differently shaken by reading Fifty Shades of Grey; this time round, their homework is The Alchemist. It plays a smaller role to the plot. It touches about destiny. “Not something I ramble on about,” says Keaton, “because it’s all part of it, of what we all deal with.” A gnomic pause. “And then, sometimes, it’s quite great.”

What about her character’s big speech about holding onto youthful hopes? “I’m somewhat addicted to getting in my car and driving through the streets of LA,” she says – once more, a bit off-topic. “A habit most people avoid any more. And then getting out and snapping pictures of these shops and buildings that have been just decimated. They aren’t there!”

Why are they so eerie? “Because life is unsettling! You hold 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 find it hard slightly to picture it. Los Angeles is not, ultimately, a pedestrian city, unless you’re on your last legs. Anybody on the pavement is noticeable – the actress especially. Do people ever ask what she is up to? “No, because they aren’t interested. For the most part, they’re just in a hurry and they’re not looking.”

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

Building Aficionado

Actually, Keaton is quite the architecture specialist. She has earned more money flipping houses 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 believe they’re more present in Italy. They’re more there with you. It’s just so different from things here. It’s not as driven.” While filming, she saw a lot of doors and shared photos of them to Instagram.

“Goodness gracious. I adore doors. Yes. 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 sold or why is it vacant? It prompts reflection about all the facets that more or less all of us experience. Like: oh, I did that movie, but the other one was not succeeding 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 fortunate have cars, which transport you all over the place. I love my car.”

Which model does she have?

“So, 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.”

Does she go fast? “No. What I like to do is observe, so I can have issues with that, when I’m not watching the road, I recall Mom used to tell me: ‘Diane, avoid that. Heavens, watch out. Look ahead. Don’t start looking around when you’re driving.’ Yes.”

Distinct Character

If it’s not yet clear, talking with Keaton is like hearing outtakes from Annie Hall delivered by carrier pigeon. She’s a unique 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 stark difference with some of her film co-stars. But most charming today is how indistinguishable she seems from her screen self.

“I believe the degree of overlap 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, how she’s wired. She is relentlessly in the moment, as a human and as an artist.”

One morning, 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 has all of that depth in her soul.” Even somewhere 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 self-deprecating. That somewhat downplays it. “Perhaps 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 life and existence that to ponder the larger … There is no time or space for it.”

Background

Keaton was delivered in an LA outskirt in 1946, the first of four kids for Dorothy and Jack Hall. Her father was an estate agent, her mother won the local crown in the Mrs America competition for accomplished housewives. Seeing her honored on stage prompted a mix of satisfaction and jealousy in Keaton, who was eight at the time.

Dorothy was also a productive – and unfulfilled – photographer, collagist, potter and journal keeper (85 volumes). Each of Keaton’s autobiographies, as well as her writings, are as much about her parent as, say, {starring|appearing