I’m not marriage material
As Diane Keaton makes her return to the big screen in Hampstead, she talks to KATE WHITING about playing a fish out of water, adopting kids in her 50s and why she didn’t marry any of her famous beaus
IF Diane Keaton had any nerves about playing Brendan Gleeson’s love interest in their new film Hampstead, they vanished the minute they met in make-up. “A lot of men don’t like to talk in the make-up trailer, but the make-up trailer is my most important start of the day,” says the 71-year-old actress, describing the bear-like Irish actor as “a big, generous, brilliant man”.
Hampstead is based on the true story of Harry Hallowes, an Irishman, who in 2007 won squatters rights to a half-acre plot of land on Hampstead Heath, worth £2 million, because he’d lived there for more than 12 years.
Diane plays Emily Walters, an American widow living in a flat overlooking the heath, and struggling financially. From an attic window, she spots Donald Horner (Gleeson) being attacked in his shack – and goes to find him. What ensues is a sweet and funny love story, as two people that don’t quite fit in take solace in each other.
“What I liked about [Emily] was that she was stuck and lying to herself, she was kind of charming, but she was lost – she needed something to jolt her out of her rut. And then, ‘Boom!’ everything changed with a pair of binoculars.”
Diane’s iconic Annie Hall look – buttoned up shirts and scarves, and trouser suits with top-pocket handkerchiefs – can be seen in the film, although, as she says, it’s a “little more conservative”.
“The costume designer, Liza Bracey, the sweetest woman ever, toned it down, which was important, but also, I did want to be that fish-out-of-water. I didn’t want to look like the other women in the movie, because they were all proper and well-to-do and wealthy, ‘the club’... and I wanted me to be the person from America who was, you know, just not really quite right.”
‘The club’ is led by busy-body block of flats resident Fiona, played by Lesley Manville, who lends Emily money but pressures her to support her husband’s company’s bid to develop the land Donald lives on.
Compared to Emily, the group of ladies-who-lunch in her building seem completely disingenuous, but Diane disagrees.
“She was just as guilty of being disingenuous herself. She took her
It was touching and sad and beautiful...
On the recent reunion of the cast of The Godfather
money, she pretended like she liked her... not OK. That’s why I was really interested about her relationship to these people, where she was never honest, didn’t stand for much of anything and kind of going along... Every bit as bad as everyone else.”
Does she think the film industry can be disingenuous?
“I don’t think Hollywood is shallow, I think it’s complicated like everything else. And also, what is Hollywood anymore? The concept of Hollywood in general is over. It’s so vast now, entertainment and what it means and the kind of people that are drawn to it, it’s another world.”
It’s a world away from the Hollywood of 40 years ago, when Diane’s big break came in 1977’s Annie Hall, which was written and directed by and co-starred her former boyfriend and frequent collaborator Woody Allen. It won four Oscars, including Best Actress and made a style icon of Diane, who today is dressed suitably ‘Annie’ in a crisp white shirt, black jacket cinched in with a wide belt, wide-leg trousers and chunky black boots. How much of Annie was Diane? “I think it was a combination – being a great writer, Woody wrote it. That’s really hard to do, even if you’re writing somebody you know, to have that ability – he’s been able to write female parts better than anybody. He’s a great observer of women in particular. It’s amazing how he captures their voices.”
Five years earlier, at 26, her first film role was as Michael Corleone’s long-suffering wife Kay in The Godfather, a role Diane has said “had no voice”. What did she mean by that?
“I think that was an interesting reason [director Francis Ford Coppola] might have cast me, because she hadn’t developed her voice. She didn’t know, she was just in love with this man and it just slowly evolved. That was one of the interesting parts of the Godfather, that he changed so much. Power corrupts absolutely.”
In April, the director and members of the cast, including Al Pacino who played Michael, Robert De Niro and Robert Duvall, gathered to mark the film’s 45th anniversary.
“It was touching and sad and beautiful and Francis was telling those great stories as only Francis could. I don’t think I’ve seen Al Pacino in 20 years! It was heartbreaking on some level because many people are gone, but at the same time, I was so proud just to be a small part of that movie.”
Diane dated Pacino on and off, and Warren Beatty is also on her list of former beaus. But she never married. Was she tempted?
“Of course I was tempted, but mercifully I didn’t. I don’t think I’m marriage material. I got used to my mother being in a certain sense my assistant. She was always helping me do what I wanted to do, so I didn’t really want to be a wife, because in those days – I was born in ‘46 – what a woman’s role was, I didn’t really want that role. “I think instinctively something in me knew, ‘Gee that isn’t really what I want’. I want someone to help me get what I want... That’s what my mum represented, she was a very unique mother. Everything I wanted to do, she tried to help me and they were all my ideas. She facilitated, she was my first assistant in the grand scheme of things. I loved her dearly.”
Diane became a mother herself at 50, after her father died, when she adopted her first child, daughter Dexter, and then five years later, son Duke.
“You know, it’s a little old. It’s sort of like I should have been a grandmother and I was by myself, so it was a big task to take on,” she says now. “Of course, I wouldn’t have it any other way, ever, but I do think there are certain things that are probably best younger.”
When she looks back over her career, is there anything she would tell her younger self now?
“I wish I had been less hesitant and more assertive, ‘cos I would have seen more and known more. But also I’m really happy with what I have.” Hampstead opens in cinemas on Friday June 23.