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Right before her canine companion almost dies, my call with the acclaimed actress is chaotic. There’s a delay on the line. Conversation halts and resumes like a milk float. I’d emailed questions but she didn’t review them. She wants to talk about doors. Every answer comes filled with caveats. It’s enjoyable and stressful – and intelligent. She aims to evade her own interview.

Hollywood’s Extremely Modest Celebrity

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

“It’s preferable when you avoid seeing me,” she says, “or see them, because it becomes so strange, you know? I suppose I mean: it’s not that bad or anything, but it’s a little odd.” We both talk, stop, interrupt each other again, a car crash of chatter. Yes, phone is so much better, I say, and if there’s any nicer sound than the star laughing at your joke, I’d like to hear it.

A pause. “I believe a little goes plenty,” she says. “I mean, don’t do much more.” Not for the last time, I’m not exactly sure what she meant.

Book Club Sequel

In any case, in Book Club: The Next Chapter, a sequel to the 2018 hit, Keaton again plays Diane, a woman in her 70s, bumbling, quirky, fond of men’s tailoring and broad hats. “We borrowed a bunch of ideas from her life,” says filmmaker Bill Holderman, who co-wrote with his wife, Erin Simms, who talk with me over Zoom a few days later. Keaton did suggest 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 bereaved Diane connects with the actor. In the sequel, the four companions go to Italy for Fonda’s bridal shower. Expect big dinners, long montages (dresses, shops, unclad sculptures), endless innuendo and a remarkably large part for the show’s Hugh Quarshie. And booze. So much drink.

I felt amazed by the drinking, I say; is it accurate? “Oh yeah,” says Keaton enthusiastically. “About six in the morning I’ll drink a Lillet, or a chardonnay.” It’s now 11am; how many bottles down is she? “Goodness, maybe 25?”

In fact, Keaton has launched a white and a red variety, but both are intended to be drunk over a tumbler of ice – not the recommended way of the truly seasoned wino. Nevertheless, she’s eager to run with the fiction: “Maybe then I’ll get a different kind of part. ‘They say Diane Keaton is a big consumer and you can really push her around. It simplifies things if she just shuts up and drinks.’ Absurd!”

Film’s Theme

The first Book Club made 8x its cost by catering to overlooked over-60s who loved Sex and the City. Its story saw all four women differently shaken by reading Fifty Shades of Grey; in this installment, their homework is The Alchemist. It plays a smaller role to the plot. There’s some stuff about destiny. “Not something I dwell about,” says Keaton, “because it’s an aspect of it, of what we all face.” A gnomic pause. “And then, sometimes, it’s kind of great.”

Regarding her character’s big monologue about holding onto youthful hopes? “I’m somewhat addicted to getting in my car and driving through the streets of LA,” she says – again, 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 largely destroyed. They’re no longer there!”

Why are they so haunting? “Because existence is unsettling! You hold an idea in your mind of what it is, or what it should be, or what it might become. 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. Anyone on the sidewalk is noticeable – the actress especially. Do people ever ask what she’s doing? “No, because they don’t care. For the most part, they’re just in a rush and they’re not looking.”

Has she ever sneak into one of the buildings? “No, I couldn’t. My God, I’d be thrown in jail because they’re secured! You want me to go to jail? That would be better for you. You could write: ‘I spoke to Diane Keaton but then I learned she got incarcerated because she tried get inside old stores.’ Yes! I bet.”

Building Aficionado

Actually, Keaton is quite the architecture expert. She’s made more money flipping houses for clients (who include Madonna) than she has making movies. You can tell a lot about a society through its city design, 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 less frantic.” While filming, she saw a lot of entryways and posted photos of them to Instagram.

“Goodness gracious. Oh, I love doors. Uh-huh. In fact, I’m looking at them right now.” She enjoys to imagine the exits and entrances, “the people who lived there or what they sold or why is it empty? It makes you think about all the facets that pretty much all of us experience. Like: oh, I did that movie, but the other one was not working out very well, but then, you know, something snuck in.

“It’s truly interesting that we’re living, that we’re here, and that most of us who are lucky have cars, which take you all over the place. I love my car.”

Which model does she have?

“Well, I have a [Mercedes] G-wagon. I’m a bitch. I’m luxurious. I’m very upscale. It’s a black car. Yeah. It’s pretty good though. I enjoy it.”

Is she a speeder? “No. What I like to do is observe, so I can get in trouble with that, when I’m not watching the road, I remember Mom used to tell me: ‘Diane, avoid that. Heavens, be careful. Focus forward. Don’t begin looking around when you’re driving.’ Yeah.”

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 singular actor in so many ways – her aversion to cosmetic surgery, for instance, and hair dye, and anything more revealing than a roll-neck, makes for a stark difference with some of her film co-stars. But most charming today is how indistinguishable she seems from her on-screen persona.

“I think the degree of similarity in the comparison of Diane as a individual and Diane as an performer,” says Holderman, “is one-of-a-kind. Her way of being in the world, her innate nature. She remains relentlessly in the moment, as a human and as an artist.”

One morning, they visited the Sistine Chapel together. “To watch her study the world is to comprehend 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 creative instinct, as they get older, become self-aware.” In some way, he says, she hasn’t.

Keaton is usually described as modest. That sort of downplays it. “Perhaps she’d be upset for saying this,” says Holderman, carefully. “She is aware she’s a celebrity, but I don’t believe she knows she’s a film icon. She’s just so in the moment of her life and being that to ponder the larger … There’s just 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 earned the local crown in the Mrs America competition for skilled housewives. Seeing her honored on stage evoked a mix of pride and jealousy in Keaton, who was eight at the time.

Dorothy was also a prolific – and unfulfilled – photographer, collage artist, potter and journal keeper (85 volumes). Both of Keaton’s autobiographies, as well as her writings, are as much about her parent as, for example, {starring|appearing