MORE TO LIFE THAN MOVIES FOR KEATON

From The Vancouver Sun

Published in 08 February ‘07
Thanx to Paola

Diane Keaton has this story about the day she and her young daughter stood in the rubble of Jimmy Stewart's Beverly Hills house.

It tells us a great deal about the Oscar-winning actress herself.

You see, she's always been fascinated by architecture, dating back to the days when she was growing up in Southern California and paid a visit with her family to the legendary San Juan Capistrano mission to watch the swallows make their annual return.

"It was kind of this stunning moment for me -- just being there in that setting with those arches and the way the mission was built and kind of a sense of history."

Later, when she was a big star and able to afford it, she purchased a house designed by the son of Frank Lloyd Wright. "It was a very unusual house and such a pleasure to live in it." Then she became interested in Spanish colonial architecture, so she bought a Spanish colonial house, just around the corner from James Stewart's old home. "He had an old Tudor -- one of those really interesting old Tudors," she recalls.

But six months after her legendary neighbor died, Stewart's family sold his house and it was torn down. Keaton felt an overwhelming shock and loss."

I remember going to the ruins of that house with my daughter who was three at the time, and saving some of the tile. And I just remember feeling: 'What are they going to build to replace this? This was Jimmy Stewart's house!' "

Which is why Keaton was finally "propelled" to join the Los Angeles Conservancy, a powerful heritage preservation group with a mandate to conserve the past in a city where architectural permanency is often an oddity and where a building is often considered obsolete 20 years after it was built.

She's officially meeting reporters to talk about her latest movie, Because I Said So, in which she plays Mandy Moore's interfering mom. "I like the movie," she says. "I think it's a nice little comedy."

Meanwhile, heritage conservation is not her only enthusiasm. She also writes books. She has one coming out on Spanish colonial architecture, and another on scrapbooks that she's co-writing with a friend.

Why scrapbooks? Well, It seems that Keaton is fascinated by them and has collected hundreds.

"I've noticed that scrapbooks are really people's way of visually documenting their lives and interests with things that compel them. People who aren't really artists who have a need to express themselves visually. We collected all these scrapbooks from various sources and we picked the imagery that we thought was really outstanding -- that was eye-grabbing. It's kind of poetic -- like anonymous art in a way, yet very personal."

The anthology will feature scrapbooks dating back 70 years. The contents will range from children's scrapbooks, which are relatively common, to scrapbooks which reflect one person's obsession. "Like one man had a scrapbook about what he did back in the '40s ... and it's just bizarre. Another person had a scrapbook about fashion dos and don'ts. We also have a great Eddie Fisher scrapbook."

Keaton also finds time to show up in L'Oreal advertisements.

"What made me decide to do it was that they asked me to do it. And I thought it was a tremendous honour to do that because -- hey, I'm not really a beauty." But she likes the idea of "telling women my age that we should really enjoy ourselves and feel proud of ourselves and think we're okay, we're fine, we're good-looking. Hey! Be proud!"

Keaton doesn't hesitate to remind us of that fact that she's now 61. So is age a problem for her at all? Her response is predictably honest.

"It's got to be a problem in some ways because you're moving along. I mean you can't go on forever."

She made a mistake last year in throwing a 60th birthday bash for herself. "I don't think I ever want to do that again. It was awkward -- it didn't feel right. This year it was really nice because I just had dinner with my kids. We didn't make too much of it."

Which brings her to the subject of her two children. Keaton, who never married, adopted a baby girl in 1996 and a baby boy in 2001. She says she has no trouble relating to the younger generation.

"I live with two very young people, so I understand what it's like living with a six-year-old and an 11-year-old. My 11-year-old -- my daughter, bless her -- is already kind of culturally aware of the singing groups and the teen movies." As for her own film work: "They have no interest in what I do, which I think is very healthy. We live a relatively normal -- well, sort of normal -- life."

Adopting in middle age is typical of an actress who has always been her own person and who gave perhaps the most memorable utterance to that philosophy with her Oscar-winning performance as Annie Hall three decades ago. Three decades later, she remains as much of a free spirit as Annie.

"Well, you know, one of the good things about getting older is that I think it fuels your ambition. It does for me anyway. I think it makes you want to do more while you can. I think it makes you appreciate life more and demand more out of life -- as opposed to the idea that you just roll over. I don't buy into that for a second -- not at all. I feel much more propelled to explore things that I haven't tried. And who cares? I mean, it's my life.

"I think you sort of start to understand that you really do own your own life when you're older. Younger, I was consumed by whether I was being accepted or not, whether I was going to do what I wanted to do or not. Was I going to meet the right person? Was I going to follow the rules, as you're expected to? But when you're my age -- what are the rules? You make your own rules. You know enough to know that the rules don't necessarily fit you."

But what about Diane Keaton, movie star?

She loved working playing a meddlesome mother in Because I Said So. She loved the film's comic situations and the fact that Mom gets her "comeuppance." But it's clear that Keaton could very easily turn her back on acting at any time.

"My expectations are different. I don't have the longing I had to be in the movies anymore at all. I got to be in the movies. I got to act in the movies. I got to be in movies that I'm very proud of -- some of them -- so my dream is fulfilled. Now it's more doing what I can do ... and living my life more realistically."

By Jamie Portman, CanWest News Service