Falling in love? It's all just an act

By Dana Kennedy

Dec. 14, 2003 12 AM PT

Special to The Times

Diane KEATON doesn’t give the answer you want when asked if what happens in her new movie -- in which Jack Nicholson falls for her, the 50-ish mother of his young girlfriend -- could occur in real life. No, she says, not for her, anyway.

Even though she’s gotten almost as much attention for her famous lovers -- Woody Allen, Al Pacino and Warren Beatty -- as she has for her acting and directing career, Keaton, 57, insists that her romantic life is over. She has never married, doesn’t expect to and doesn’t seem too concerned about it. If she has regrets, they have more to do with staying too earthbound in matters of love -- marriage is a nonissue.

“I don’t think it’s even a remote possibility,” says Keaton, seated in her favorite booth in the Polo Lounge at the Beverly Hills Hotel, where she has an unobstructed view of the large pepper tree she loves. “Oh, no. It’s out of the picture.” Even though Nicholson and Keaton have gone out socially since the filming of “Something’s Gotta Give” ended, and one gossip columnist even reported they were dating, Keaton says that’s impossible as well.

“No, Jack and I would never get together like that,” she says. “I can’t see Jack going out with someone in their 50s. Also, we are both too set in our ways, and he’s too huge, a myth, a legend. There’s no way.”

She may sound negative, but in fact Keaton may be the world’s most optimistic pessimist, self-effacing but also filled with a zest for life, which friends -- and the men in her life -- frequently note. Though she sometimes comes off in interviews as a charming naif, a perpetual Annie Hall, she is disarmingly down-to-earth during a long lunch conversation about her enduring career, once-flashy love affairs and late-in-life motherhood.

“Jack and I were humiliated most of the time,” she says, referring to their many intimate scenes in the movie. “There was so much kissing and all this time in bed. We felt so much terror about being so exposed, and we got to be so close because of that.”

Dressed in a white turtleneck and simple dark pants, much like the chic, mostly Gap wardrobe she sports in “Something’s Gotta Give,” Keaton is serious and thoughtful, then the next moment dissolves into giddy laughter and clutches one’s arm. She cheerfully insists that other older women could easily find great passion later in life, as her character Erica Barry does in “Something’s Gotta Give.”

Erica’s daughter, played by Amanda Peet, is dating Nicholson as the movie begins. She brings him to her mother’s house in the Hamptons where he develops chest pains and is nursed back to health by Erica.

Nicholson’s doctor, played by Keanu Reeves, gets a crush on Keaton’s character at the same time Nicholson does.

“I’m not as hopeful, me, Diane, but for other women, why not?” she says. “I think these things can happen, and they’re beautiful when they do. Women should know it’s out there for them.” As for younger men, Keaton again gives an emphatic no -- at least for her.

The very mention of the trend of older women dating younger men, like 41-year-old Demi Moore’s relationship with 25-year-old Ashton Kutcher, almost gives her palpitations.

“Yuck, it feels all wrong to me,” she says. “I don’t want to be around somebody who’s hard as a rock and I’m this, let’s just say, softer person. It’s like being with your son to me, not appealing. God bless every woman who has a younger man but ... no! Kissing Keanu in the movie was really fun but horribly embarrassing. As soon as they said ‘cut,’ we’d both run to opposite sides of the room.”

Keaton turns out to be a paradox on many levels: a femme fatale who says she never felt worthy of her dazzling lovers; a devoted single mother who waited until she was 50 to adopt her first child; an older actress who continues to get major roles after more than 30 years in Hollywood but says she has resisted cosmetic surgery.

“The face-lift thing, oh my God,” she groans, hiding her face behind her hands. “I’m not afraid of the knife so much as I’m afraid of the end of everything except myself. You’ve got to let it go. Somebody’s got to carry the mantle of aging.... To me, if you can stick with the authentic, you have a better chance of remaining authentic. Otherwise I think you run the risk of becoming so self-involved that you roll into a ball and shut everything out.”

‘She’s like a magnet’

Friends and colleagues are used to her self-deprecation but don’t necessarily buy into what she says, especially about her love life.

“I think Diane has more of a chance of men falling in love with her than anyone I know,” says Nancy Meyers, 53, who co-wrote three of Keaton’s previous films -- “Baby Boom” (1987), “Father of the Bride” (1991) and “Father of the Bride II” (1995) -- and wrote “Something’s Gotta Give” specifically for Keaton, then directed it.

“The men on my set all fell for her. Between takes, Jack would never leave her side. Keanu was wild about her. She’s like a magnet for these guys. She may be done, but the men are not done.”

Nicholson, who co-starred with Beatty and Keaton in “Reds” (1981), concurs. “Keaton’s always fascinated me,” he says. “We always have so much fun together. She’s a lively, eccentric person, she has tremendous vitality, that’s why men like her so much. She’s kind, but she’s also a toughie, she doesn’t suffer fools. I think the only reason she’s never married is that she’s such a free spirit. I don’t think she’s had many unresolved relationships.” Nicholson, 66, agrees that it’s more difficult to expect a grand passion after a certain age but says it’s more likely to happen to Keaton than to him.

He says he is not involved with a woman at present and has actually spent more time with Keaton in recent months, taking her to the opera and basketball games, than anyone else.

“It’s never over,” he says. “Even though you know the probabilities aren’t as good as they once were. Keaton’s at least out there, she has a real chance. She runs me into the ground with her energy. At the end of this picture, she decided to travel to Spain. I was lagging. I could barely drive home. I’m more sedentary. But I’m still ready to go.”

Keaton is still ready to go, also, for everything but love. A passionate photographer, she’s published three books of her work. And her film career has taken her into risky territory -- she’s an executive producer of this year’s “Elephant,” Gus Van Sant’s school-shooting drama.

Meyers says the actress is happier now than she’s ever seen her, and Keaton says motherhood has eclipsed all previous chapters in her life. Her daughter, Dexter, is 8, and her son, Duke, is 3. She decided to adopt, she says, when her father was dying and she realized she wanted a family of her own.

“Having children is so much more important than everything else I have done,” says Keaton, who makes her home in Beverly Hills. “When you’re a parent the entire landscape of your life is entirely obliterated by them. I know you’re supposed to have children when you’re younger, but I don’t think I could have. I was way too ambitious, too selfish.” Keaton says she coasted for many years on the success of “Annie Hall,” the 1977 classic that won her a best actress Oscar, and never focused on finding a suitable husband.

“It gave me a false sense of security that I found out about 10 years later was completely bogus,” she says. “I thought I was going to be able to go through life with these relationships because somebody would always love me or find me attractive in some way because of this good fortune that came my way.” Celebrity, Keaton says, was a trap that both warped and enhanced her life.

“You have to be very wary of fame -- it’s hard not to get sucked up into it,” she says. “It was always a very big battle for me. Because with fame came these relationships that were all about fame as well. There was an element of the world of acting and make-believe and pretending in these relationships that was very exciting.” Take Warren Beatty.

“I wasn’t the Warren Beatty type, but there I was,” Keaton says. “He was just so ... overwhelming in every way. He was so beautiful, which was very alluring to me. I remember looking at his face and just going, ‘How am I here with this?’ The brilliance and the talent, it’s pretty heady, you get caught up in it.”

When Beatty is apprised of what Keaton said about him, particularly the part about being beautiful and overwhelming, he seems nonplused. “There was no punch line?” he says.

Beatty says he feels it is too “delicate” to talk about Keaton in depth but does allow that she is “never boring” and, no, it was not awkward to work with her years after their affair, on his 2001 flop “Town & Country.” “She’s highly strung, she’s artistic and she has a strong moral core that is serving her well in motherhood,” he says.

“She’s a person who seizes the day -- and early.” When asked if he believes that a woman of 57 can still be hot, he again chooses his words carefully. “My answer is: absolutely,” says Beatty, who is married to 45-year-old Annette Bening. “My question is, can a woman be hot at less than 45?”

Keaton’s attraction to Allen seems more tied to his professional genius -- and the fun she had working with him. “Woody was a straight shooter,” she says. “We never really talked about the actual work, not ever. He’d just say, ‘make it more real, mess it up a little here.’ That’s all. I enjoyed the first few movies for him, but I knew ‘Annie Hall’ was really good. I had a lot of expectations for that and they panned out.” Keaton is also enthusiastic about her most recent venture with Allen, “Manhattan Murder Mystery” (1993). She replaced Mia Farrow when Allen and Farrow broke up after his affair with Farrow’s daughter, Soon-Yi Previn.

“That was so much fun for me, do you understand how much fun?” she says, “We were finished every day at 2 in the afternoon. You can’t imagine how freeing the hand-held camera is. You never have to hit a mark, and you never have to do cover shots.”

Once lovers, now friends

She says she is not bitter about never having married, nor does she begrudge her former boyfriends their younger wives and children. Beatty, 66, has been married to Bening since 1992 and they have four children. Allen, 68, has been married to Previn, 33, since 1997 and they have adopted two daughters.

“I have not been able to manage relationships with men very well,” Keaton says. “I appreciated the fact that they all ended nicely and went away at the right time. I tried to be honorable to them. I can’t imagine what it would have been like to stay with them, and I’m sure they feel the same way about me. What if they’d been stuck with me? Ay, yi yi!” Keaton has remained friendly with both Allen and Beatty and has continued to work with them. She has not stayed on close terms with Pacino.

“It wouldn’t have worked long-term with Woody or Warren,” Keaton says. “That’s why it’s fun to see when they do work. It’s fun to see Warren with Annette because that works. They are a couple, they make it work together. Soon-Yi is a strong woman like Annette, and I think those two men like that. I don’t think that’s what I was. I was more nervous and hesitant.” Hesitant to the point where Keaton admits she has never lost herself in a relationship with a man and unabashedly declared her love the way Erica Barry does with Nicholson in “Something’s Gotta Give.”

“I’ve never done that,” she says. “You have to be brave to throw yourself at a man like that. I’m a little guarded and wary.” Keaton made friends with actress Sarah Paulson, now 28, four years ago when they made “The Other Sister” together and is still haunted by how Paulson described a love affair to her.

“Sarah fell in love and she started talking about being in love and what it felt like and these moments she shared with the man and how she wanted to have his children,” Keaton recalls. “I thought, ‘Oh my God, where have I been all my life?’ I have never felt that way, never. That’s why it’s been fortunate for me to be an actress because at least I could play it.” So she’s never been in love? “Not where I felt the moments were shared and we were going to have a future together, that romantic kind of complete feeling of being happy and hopeful. No, I’ve never had that feeling.”

Nor does Keaton feel that she ever became as big a star as she could have been, considering that she calls herself “totally ambitious.” “I was a little removed from everything, I did things on my own terms,” she says. “I never broke through as America’s sweetheart. I was never Meg Ryan, and I never made gazillions of dollars. I don’t think I was pretty enough. I think you have to be really kind of pretty.”

Still, as Keaton says more than once, “it’s all been fine,” and one believes her. She claims not to know when her next project will come, but she’s worked steadily as an actress in more than 40 movies since “Lovers and Other Strangers” (1970) and says she hopes to build on a directing career that includes “Unstrung Heroes” (1995) and “Hanging Up” (2000). After some last-minute off-the-record dishing, Keaton leaves to collect her daughter from a field trip.

She looks slightly apologetic again. “I just hope I haven’t been too boring,” she says, and then she’s gone.