Diane Keaton is having a Diane Keaton moment.

Ever the multitasker, she's trying to drive to a meeting in Los Angeles, make sense of a set of directions and speak by cellphone about her latest movie, "Because I Said So." But right now Los Angeles is getting the better of the 61-year-old Oscar winner, and she's getting flustered in that hysterically funny, quirky and endearing Diane Keaton way.

"You know, I don't know where I am," she shouts. "Oooooooh. Uh-oh. I always do this. I don't know where the hell I am. I start thinking about what I'm saying and ... duh! Anyway. ..."

"Because I Said So" opens today with Keaton starring as Daphne, the loving if slightly overbearing single mother of Milly (Mandy Moore), Maggie (Lauren Graham) and Mae (Piper Perabo). Daphne takes to the Internet to find Mr. Right for Milly - unbeknownst to Milly - and her daughter ends up with two men vying for her affections, a smart-but-dull architect (Tom Everett Scott) and an easygoing musician (Gabriel Macht).

Complicating matters, Daphne finds herself attracted to the musician's father (Stephen Collins).

"I think it's a fantastic situation comedy," Keaton says, "and, for an actress, a comic part like this is very unusual. There's plenty for me to do in this movie. I'm getting into all kinds of trouble, and we loosely thought of Daphne as our Gale Storm or Lucille Ball character, the person who's constantly stirring it up and getting into trouble, who with the best of intentions paves the road to hell.

"I adored the fact that I would still be in the ballpark in the romance area," she adds. "That's wonderful for women my age, because so frequently that's not part of the deal when you take on the mother role."

At one point, during the portion of the film in which Daphne doesn't talk, she scribbles a note to Milly asking her daughter what an orgasm feels like. It's one of the funniest and most touching scenes in "Because I Said So," and Keaton - herself a single mother of two - reports almost gleefully that it's generating plenty of conversation.

"A lot of people are surprised by the fact that a mother and a daughter would talk about it," she says, "but I think, because it's part of the wonderful setup where I can't actually speak, it took away the onus of actually discussing it. My daughter is a tween, she's 11, and there are all these books you can read about the experience of, say, growing breasts. So you don't have to actually discuss them, which is humiliating for both parties.

"But, if you're reading about it, you can get a big kick out of it and still really get the information," Keaton says.

As for her younger co-stars, Keaton has nothing but good words.

"I adore Mandy," Keaton says. "I think the future is hers. She's a triple whammy to me. She's so ... beautiful, like a young Claudia Cardinale, with that open, sweet face. Her acting is lovely, and she's lovely to work with. And then she can sing."

Keaton goes on to say that she also enjoyed working with director Michael Lehmann, whose credits include "Heathers" (1989), "The Truth About Cats and Dogs" (1996) and several episodes of Lisa Kudrow's short-lived television series "The Comeback" (2005).

More than a few people have asked Keaton how differently "Because I Said So" - which stars four women and was written by a woman - might have turned out if it had been directed by a woman like Nora Ephron, Nancy Meyers or, for that matter, Diane Keaton, who has several directorial credits of her own. Her answer, she says, is always the same.

"I don't know," she says. "But I don't want to be a sexist. I will not say that a man is incapable of directing a female-driven comedy. That's absurd. Look at James Brooks.

"Whether someone's male or female, who cares?" Keaton says.

Always juggling an array of activities, Keaton is working on three upcoming books, including one about Spanish-Colonial architecture and another devoted to scrapbooks.

She's wrapped production on the film comedy "Momma's Boy," co-starring Jon Heder as her lazy son and Jeff Daniels as a self-help guru whom she romances. And she's about to start work on "Smother," a comedy in which her character drives her recently unemployed son (Dax Shepard) to distraction after moving in with him and his wife (Liv Tyler).

"I'm full of projects and things that I love and enjoy," the actress says. "That's not something that's going to change. I have a lot of energy, a lot of vitality and, as I get older, unlike people who think 'Oh, these are the years' and 'You can relax and take stock.' ... Forget it! Are you kidding? No. No, no, no, no. No. I'm moving on, doing the next thing."

Keaton's next thing will be whatever it's meant to be, she adds. She's never planned anything in the past, and refuses to plot a course for her life.

"I think life is never predictable," Keaton says. "I don't think I ever could have imagined what has happened in my life, or how I lived it or how I managed to keep going. ... I don't think that's part of the deal of life." 

By Ian Spelling 

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