Asked to lose weight for her role, Keaton went on a peculiar diet. “It’s one of those weird ones – placenta of unborn lamb. A shot every day,” she told The New York Times in 1972. “The Hair people paid for half of it and I paid the other half – $35 a week – and I lost a lot of weight and never gained it back.” She refused to take her clothes off for the nude scene. “It wasn’t for any sort of philosophical reason. It was just that I was too scared.”
Her stage stint in Play It Again, Sam came in 1969, followed by a movie role in Lovers and Other Strangers (1970). A small part but enough to enrapture, with Al Ruddy, producer of The Godfather casting her as Kay Adams. On the set of The Godfather Part II (1974), Keaton was inspired for her Annie Hall aesthetic. “I stole what I wanted to wear from the cool-looking women on the streets of Soho. Annie’s khaki pants, vest and tie came from them,” she wrote in her memoir. “I stole the hat from Aurore Clément, Dean Tavoularis’s future wife, who showed up on the set of The Godfather Part II one day wearing a man’s slouchy bolero pulled down low over her forehead. Aurore’s hat put the finishing touch on the so-called Annie Hall look.”
Keaton had long relationships with Warren Beatty, Al Pacino and Allen, but never married. “I have this feeling – I don’t know if I really want to stay in New York,” she told The New York Times in 1972. “My little dream has always been to have a house on the ocean in California – not a big one, just a little house with about three or four dogs. And a little old car. That’s my dream.”
Keaton adopted her daughter Dexter in 1996 and son Duke in 2001, and lived in a Spanish colonial revival in Beverly Hills with two rescue dogs, elaborate archways, courtyards and drama. She kept 20 brimmed hats, two top hats, and 34 caps and berets displayed neatly in her bedroom wardrobe.
In 2019 she starred in Poms, a film about a retirement home cheerleading squad that raised issues about loneliness. “I know what I am by now,” she told the Los Angeles Times. “I know how old I am. I know what my limitations are and what I can and can’t do. So if something appeals to me, I’m definitely going to go for it.”
