When Diane Keaton was told she was iconic, she immediately deflected.
"I don’t really see it that way. I live with myself and I'm hardly iconic," the actor told Interview magazine in 2021.
"I get up in the morning and it’s me again. I’m just another person saying, 'Gee, I’d better feed the dog.'"
Despite disagreeing, Keaton is an icon in every sense of the word.
At 78, the Oscar-winner has been a leading lady for more than five decades. She's also an accomplished photographer, bestselling author, and mum-of-two all on her own.
(And you can't forget fashion icon with her distinctly cool style, turtlenecks and all.)
Watch the trailer for Something's Gotta Give here. Post continues below.
Born in Los Angeles in 1946, Keaton is the eldest of four. Her father was a civil engineer, her mother a stay-at-home mum. It was a normal upbringing; suburban.
"Beautiful mother, charming, hard-working father, who made a very good living. It all looked like that," she told The Guardian in 2014.
Following acting school and a stint on Broadway, Keaton got her breakthrough role as Kay Adams, the wife of Al Pacino's Michael Corleone in Francis Ford Coppola's 1972 film, The Godfather.
She'd never read the book.
"I auditioned for The Godfather, not having ever read The Godfather or caring about The Godfather or anything, because all I was doing was auditioning. I needed to get work," Keaton told PEOPLE.
"I think the kindest thing that someone's ever done for me is that I got cast."
Entering show business in her 20s (Keaton was 26 when The Godfather was released), led her to develop bulimia which lasted five years.
"I became a master at hiding. Hiding any evidence - how do you make sure no one knows? You live a lifestyle that is very strange. You’re living a lie," she told PEOPLE in 2017.
"I had a problem - it was sick and creepy. Bulimia takes a lot of time out of your day."
After undergoing psychotherapy, she overcame it.
As an actor, Keaton can do serious - like in the Godfather and Reds - but she can also do funny, very well.
Throughout the 1970s she appeared in Woody Allen's comedies - Sleeper, Love and Death and the role she is probably most well-known for, Annie Hall.
Then there was becoming Nancy Meyers' muse, starring in Baby Boom, Father of the Bride, and Something's Gotta Give.
"I feel more comfortable with comedy," she told Interview.
"I love being awkward or falling in love and laughing, or touching someone’s face and enjoying it. I love the fun that you have when you’re in a comic movie."
Keaton has openly spoken about the men in her life; all of whom she's starred opposite.
There was Woody Allen, with whom she was only briefly romantically involved with, serial womaniser Warren Beatty, Jack Nicholson, who became a very dear friend, and her on-screen husband in The Godfather, Al Pacino, who she dated for five years.
If she could've married any of them, it would've been Pacino.
“For me the Godfathers, all three of them, were about one thing - Al. It was as simple as that,” Keaton wrote in her memoir.
However, when Pacino admitted he didn't see himself settling down, the couple ended things.
"He was even less inclined to be realistic than me. And I was on the cusp of being very old," she told PEOPLE via ABC News.
"So that poor guy. I don't think he was really that interested. And I don't think a long-term happy marriage would be easy for him."
Although still open to finding love, Keaton has accepted that coupling up just wasn't in her plan.
"Listen to me: the celebrity couple is something that was short-lived, in my case. I didn't know how to do it," she told The Guardian.
"I don't have a managed life. I was never meant for the big [celebrity] scene. And I belong where I am, in a place where I'm comfortable."
"I don't feel comfortable with people who are very gifted and have a big life," Keaton added.
The actor has also reflected on how much her mother's life changed when she married, and didn't want that for herself.
"I love my dad, of course - that goes without saying - but [my mum] was always there, and he was always working," she told the publication.
"I feel like she chose family over her dreams. And she was just the best mother, but I think that she is the reason why I didn’t get married. I didn’t want to give up my independence."
At 50, Keaton changed her mind (sort of), and she adopted her first child, a daughter, Dexter, now 29.
She had just lost her father and as she acknowledged in her 2011 memoir, "After a lifetime avoiding intimacy, I suddenly got intimate in a big way."
She adopted her son, Duke, now 24, a few years later.
Although unsure whether it was the right decision, she's so glad she did.
"I spent too long worrying about whether a man loved me or not," she wrote in her memoir. "I found that raising a child was the most humanising of all loves. It is unconditional."
Now 78, Keaton continues to work. In 2022, she appeared in comedy Mack & Rita, along with the sequel to Book Club, with Jane Fonda, Candice Bergen and Mary Steenburgen, which was released in 2023. In 2024 she's already starred in two films — Arthur's Whisky, which came out in January, and the recently released Summer Camp alongside Kathy Bates and Kensington Tallman.
She's open to exploring roles beyond comedy, too.
"I really like working, so I wouldn’t mind doing any types, at this point, it’d be fun," she said during a recent interview with IndieWire.
"I could play some hideous person. Any creep. A killer. I’d be happy to look at it. Give me a chance. Whatever’s out there, that I like, I would take it."
And her advice to feeling and looking good at her age? "Just stay the f*** active," she told Vogue.
"If I sit around and think about things, it’ll be hard times. It’ll be me suffering. I don’t want to suffer. I want to be engaged in life.
"Even though it’s kind of an odd one, I’m really happy."
Feature image: Getty.
This article was originally published in August 2022, and has since been updated.
Love to travel? Take this short survey now to go in the running to win a $50 gift voucher!