Staying Fit
Diane Keaton is an American film actress, director, producer and screenwriter. She began her career on stage and made her screen debut in 1970.
Ruven Afanador
Diane Keaton can't stand still. That much becomes clear the moment she opens the door to her sleek Connecticut-style farmhouse in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles. Dressed in a black beanie, black bolero jacket, red-and-black plaid pants and unlaced black dance shoes, she instantly launches into a house tour — starting with the 1930s and '40s California Monterey furnishings in the living room. (Her sister Dorrie Hall is a dealer.) In the basement, Keaton flits from one side of the room to the other, chattering excitedly about how she intends to create a library in her next house with all the picture books scattered around here.
Keaton, 69, has made a career of playing characters very similar to her real self, a peripatetic, self-deprecating eccentric (roles such as Annie Hall in the namesake film, for which she earned an Oscar; Reds' Louise Bryant; and Erica Barry of Something's Gotta Give). She is charming and funny, daring (she started a family late and is raising daughter Dexter, 19, and son Duke, 14, on her own), and often unable to commit (among her great loves: Woody Allen, Warren Beatty, Al Pacino). She is always, literally, on the move, one way or another: In addition to acting, she writes. She takes photographs. She sings!
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Her one consistent passion for the past 25 years, however, has been serial nesting, something she describes as an addiction. She has renovated at least a dozen houses so far, including a Lloyd Wright (son of Frank) in Los Angeles, a Spanish Colonial revival in Beverly Hills and an urban farmhouse in Laguna Beach. "I've always been looking for home," explains Keaton. "I feel like I've chased the concept of home with all the renovations and building I've done in my life, and I can't stop. I can't seem to stop having the dream of it."
It's not that she doesn't make each of her homes beautiful: The last four have been featured in home style magazines. Keaton's current abode is a study in black and white, accented with Navajo pictorial rugs and natural-fabric pillows in gray, beige and brown. The place is stunning, spacious and soothing. And, Keaton says, temporary. "It's really a spec house with good light," she remarks, somewhat dismissively.
While living here, she is busy designing her first custom-built home in a canyon nearby.
Why can't Keaton seem to stop house dreaming? It's a question she isn't sure she can answer. "I ask myself, What the hell are you looking for?" she says.
It fits her, though: She is always creating. "I don't like to sit around," she says with a wry smile, tucking her legs under her willowy frame as she settles — for the moment — into a cushioned hard-back chair in the front room. "I like to do a lot of things — as much as I can."
A rare bird in show business, she works regularly in film despite being a woman over 50. November marked the release of Love the Coopers, a comedy in which she stars, opposite John Goodman, as a family matriarch. In 2016 she'll play a nun in the HBO miniseries The Young Pope. Although Keaton says she has doubts about continuing to "perform," noting that it's a lot of pressure to "live up to expectations when you've had a long career," she adds that acting is what she does best: "I like to say that I have one talent, and that would be plenty — but I also have a lot of pursuits."
Recently, those would include writing two best-sellers — 2011's Then Again, a memoir about her mother, and 2014's autobiography Let's Just Say It Wasn't Pretty. She's working on a picture book tentatively titled The House That Pinterest Built, about the canyon home she's designing using the online image service, a modern version of torn-out magazine pages. Plus, she's coming out with her own wine, a California red called The Keaton, just like the blend she drinks herself, distinctively, on ice. "It's light that way," she offers.
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