Diane Keaton, the septuagenarian who’s amassed generations of fans in her almost 60 years of acting, is the master of many things on screen.
Off screen however, the Hollywood “it girl” was a “master at hiding,” dark secrets kept by a young woman that she now admits are “creepy.”
One of Hollywood’s most accomplished leading ladies, the LA-born Diane Keaton, 77, is an icon with a career that spans almost six decades.
She started her career on stage in 1968, as an understudy to a lead character in the hippie-musical Hair, where she was discovered by Woody Allen, who then cast her as his love interest in the Broadway production, Play it Again, Sam (1969).
Her portrayal of Linda Christie, which she reprised in the 1972 film adaptation of the same name, earned the then 23-year-old her first and only Tony nomination.
Mirroring the brief stage affair her character shared with Woody Allen’s, her real-life relationship with Allen lasted only a couple of years, although they worked together on several films over the next couple of decades.
After a few minor appearances in a film, TV series and commercials, the award-winning actor then had her breakthrough role in The Godfather.
Keaton’s profile as an actor raised exponentially in her role as the girlfriend, later the wife, of Michael Corleone (Al Pacino), in the Oscar-winning film with unequaled financial and critical success.
In 1974, she reprised her role in The Godfather Part II, as the alienated wife to the boss of a criminal empire, again played by Pacino, whom she was in an on and off again relationship.
“I was mad for him. Charming, hilarious, a nonstop talker,” Keaton tells People, admitting she had a crush on Pacino before they started dating. “There was an aspect of him that was like a lost orphan, like this kind of crazy idiot savant. And oh, gorgeous!”
