A BITE FROM THE BIG APPLE
Despite all her passion for the western seaboard, as a young woman Keaton swapped coasts, moving to New York City to study theatrical arts under the celebrated teacher Sanford Meisner.
“I spent two years with Sandy. I always enjoyed singing, but I wasn’t so good at dancing,” she says. “Sandy told me that I really needed to grow up, because I was going to be OK at doing all this stuff.”
She proved more than OK in the original 1968 Broadway production of Hair before securing a role in the stage production of Woody Allen’s Play It Again, Sam the following year, for which she won a Tony. She had a romantic relationship with Allen, although they were just friends by the time they began their run of hugely successful films together—including Annie Hall in 1977.
Audiences fell hard for Keaton’s ditzy title character, and her recurring nonsense expression of “La-dee-da,” used mostly when Annie was nervous. She won an Academy Award for Best Actress for the role.
“Annie Hall was so easy it was ridiculous,” she says. “It just went fast, and we could talk loose and not be too on the script, exactly like Sandy Meisner had taught me.” Her performance looked effortless . . . and it was, sort of. “I didn’t even have to think about it, and I had no idea what it would be at the time. And then when I saw myself, I thought, I don’t like it, at least not me! I don’t like seeing myself onscreen.”
Audiences, however, loved her onscreen and elsewhere. She had
already proven herself a hugely talented dramatic actress in the first two parts of The Godfather trilogy, in 1972 and 1974, starring opposite Al Pacino.
“I was completely enamoured with Al,” she says. “I had a huge crush on him. I was like, ‘Oh, my God!’ He was so amazing. And he is such a great actor.”
THE SINGLE LIFE
Keaton had a romantic relationship with Pacino, as well as with Warren Beatty, her co-star in another of her critically acclaimed films, 1981’s Reds, which earned her another Oscar nomination. “I think I am just a great lover of talent, that’s a good way of putting it,” she says. “And Al in particular was special.”
She did not marry any of her talented collaborators and remains unmarried—and at 50, she decided to adopt, first her daughter, Dexter (in 1996), and then her son, Duke (2001). She’s mostly mum on being a mom. “I don’t want to tell you anything about them because it makes me nervous,” she explains.
Was she ever worried about being a single mom? “I wish I had found someone that I was with to be that person, but my relationships didn’t work out, and that’s OK, so I thought, Now I am this age, and I could adopt a child.
“Our lives are all different and we can do what we want,” she says as we finish our wine. “We don’t have to be perfect and be married.” We clink our glasses once more. Cheers to that.
Keaton flips houses too! Visit Parade.com/keaton to see inside a recent renovation.