Her outfit precedes her. By which I mean, the vision in front of you is so very "Keaton” that it is hard to see beyond her look, which is as singular now as it ever was. Since the late 1970s, when she redefined kookiness in her Oscar-winning performance as Annie Hall – written for her by ex-boyfriend Woody Allen and allegedly about their own relationship – her name has rarely been unyoked from the words “style icon”.
The men’s hats remain her trademark – today it’s a pale one, with black trim around the tip and crown. The inspiration came from observing French actress Aurore Clément. “I remember her on the set of The Godfather [Keaton portrayed Kay, who married Michael Corleone, played by another ex, Al Pacino] and she was wearing one of the men’s hats, and I said to myself, ‘Oh, I’ve gotta get a hat like that!’ So then I would buy them from the Goodwill [an American charity shop] or at the swap meet [flea market].” Now Keaton has them specially made at Baron Hats in Burbank.
Her trousers are also quite Annie Hall – very tight around her pencil frame, fanning out around her high-heeled black sandals – cinched in with a belt as wide as a weightlifter’s, which a costume designer created for her. The black-and-white striped shirt with oversize cuffs and a stiff collar is one she has worn for a long time. What Keaton then does – which makes her so inimitable – is mess the whole thing up with huge knuckledusters on two or three fingers of both hands, leopard-skin patterned stick-on fingernails, and clunking great crucifixes (“Cheap chains – and I found the crosses and just put them together”) swinging around her neck. It’s as though Axl Rose has been dressed by Chanel.
She's a bit low-key when she talks about her new film, Hampstead, in which she plays a widow who connects with a recluse (Brendan Gleeson) who has built a house and lived self-sufficiently on the heath of the title for 17 years. “I liked the script by Robert Festinger because it was about a woman who is my age [71] and a lost soul, and then the miracle happens. Like it sometimes does to us. We do something and out of nowhere that becomes an opportunity to change. I love that.”
I get the impression there is no romantic miracle in her life right now (she has never married) – although, perhaps, there is another kind of happiness in becoming a parent. Twenty years ago she adopted a daughter, Dexter, who is now 21, and later a son, Duke, who is 16. With all the ups and downs of motherhood, does she feel fulfilled? “Yes, but you also get moments of such concern and care,” she frowns. “It’s the strangest feeling. It’s making me sad thinking about it. Are they going to be all right?” She repeats, “Are they going to be all right?”
Did Allen know about it? “No, not at all. No one knew. I was really good at hiding. But I asked him about an analyst. Yeah, maybe he did know, but I don’t know for sure. I think it came up in a conversation like, ‘Maybe I should?’ and ‘Do you know someone?’… that kind of thing...
Her diet continues to be unusual. “I quit eating meat and fish so it’s a lot about nuts and cheeses. I do love cheese. It’s weird, once you have stopped being bulimic – and it was a habit for three years – you’re strange about food.”
She talks about how her upbringing failed to prepare her for being able to socialise with ease. Therapy helped her to get over these antisocial tendencies but it was an effort. “I was never really quite ‘in’ – I think because it wasn’t a family trait. I like to be a little detached. I’m not a joiner-in. I did cultivate friends and like to do things with them but I still do spend a lot of time by myself.”
In her 30s, while living in New York, Keaton found one way of being social that wasn’t too demanding: volunteering at a Jewish home and hospital for the aged. “I felt I had to do something, and these kinds of situations are easy for me because it’s a limited time span and you can be nice and charming and friendly and be interested and then – go.”
Her mother, she says, was “extremely artistic and lovely and encouraging all the time”. It was Dorothy who was a co-conspirator in helping her eldest daughter create her idiosyncratic style. “I remember being teased at high school for a dress that Mom had made me out of black-and-white polka-dot material with a big skirt.”
Is she still insecure about the way she looks? “You always are,” she says. “I don’t think it ever goes away. I don’t think anyone is not insecure, do you? I think everyone is a bit... What would be really great would be to just not... But, yeah, of course...” Sigh.
She stops and starts again. “It’s a ridiculous question because no one can really be happy – if you’re happy, you’re mentally ill. I mean, there’s a lot of sad things going on.”
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