Lady &the tramp
really resolved my insecurities.’
Therapy aside, it is motherhood that has truly altered Keaton’s perspective on life. She adopted her daughter Dexter, now 21, when she was 55 and her son Duke, now 19, in 2001.
There is a pause. Keaton is thinking. Her brain has jumped from companionship and motherhood to James Norton, who plays her son Philip in Hampstead.
‘Don’t you think he’s going to be the next James Bond?’ she says. ‘We were all talking about it on the set of Hampstead. He ticks every box – he’s beautiful, he’s a man, he’s very sexy, he is smart and he even went to Cambridge.’
Several weeks later, Norton – who stars in the BBC crime thriller McMafia – laughs as he hears how he is her personal Hollywood advocate for Bond.
‘I can’t quite believe she said that,’ he laughs. ‘But then again I can. Diane is exactly what you want her to be like, which is basically like no one else but her.
‘As soon as I met her it was like seeing Annie Hall; not just the way she dresses but the way she talks, the ways she behaves. She just constantly asks questions. She wanted to know all about my girlfriend, my family, how I’d renovated my flat.’
But back to Bond. Norton smiles: ‘Just to be mentioned in the same sentence as James Bond is a pretty big compliment but so far – even though people talk about it – it’s just speculation.’
He pauses: ‘But if it ever comes to pass that there is in the future even the remotest conversation about Bond, there will only be one condition as far as I am concerned – to have Diane Keaton as a Bond girl. She’s beautiful, she’s as iconic as Bond himself. It’s definitely a plan.’
Sounds like an opportunity for another bedroom scene in which Keaton would be all too happy to participate. n Interview by Louise Gannon Hampstead’ is released on June 23
‘I never looked like the usual actress. You are who you are, that’s the deal’