Diane Keaton hasn’t been on a date in around 40 years, and she’s totally fine with that. Over the years, the actor has been outspoken about her disinterest in dating and explained why getting married was never the right choice for her. When it comes down to it, the 77-year-old star has a simple reason for why dateing stopped being part of her life decades ago but a more complex explanation when it comes to not tying the knot. Read on to see what she’s said on the topic.
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In a 2019 interview, InStyle asked Keaton if men ask her out. “Never. All right? [laughs] Let’s just get that straight,” she responded. “That one’s important. I haven’t been on a date in, I would say, 35 years. No dates.” She was then asked if she wants to go on dates, to which she said, “I have a lot of male friends. I have a lot of friends, but no dates. No mwah-mwah.”
Keaton shared similar words in a March 2023 interview with AARP: The Magazine. “I don’t date,” she said. “Highly unlikely. I don’t remember anyone calling me, going, ‘This is So-and-So. I’d like to take you out.’ They don’t happen. Of course not.”
While Keaton never married, she did have relationships famous men, including her frequent collaborator Woody Allen, her Godfather co-star Al Pacino, and her Reds co-star Warren Beatty.
Speaking to CBS News in 2004, Keaton said that she remained on good terms with Allen and Beatty after their breakups.
“I would say that Woody Allen remained a great friend. And I think that speaks really well of him. And I think it speaks well of the fact that our relationship was really based on a friendship,” she said. Of Beatty—with whom she also appeared in the 2001 movie Town & Country—Keaton said, “I remain acquaintances with Warren. I don’t really stay in touch with Warren. Warren and I don’t really see each other much. But when we do, it’s affectionate.”
She also shared her affection for Pacino in a 2021 Q&A for Interview. Pacino was one of 25 celebrities who asked Keaton a question for the piece. His question was whether she’d ever read On the Road by Jack Kerouac. “OK. You’re insane, number one. And insanely brilliant. Of course, I was in love with you,” Keaton responded. “You couldn’t be more magical and entertaining and unique and all those things wrapped into one. But, no, I’ve never read Jack Kerouac’s On the Road.”
Also in the Interview Q&A, Lisa Kudrow asked Keaton what “informed” her feeling that marriage wasn’t right for her.
“It goes back to my mother, because, for me, most everything does,” Keaton said. “She had four kids, and I was the firstborn. I saw how much she gave up … I feel like she chose family over her dreams. And she was just the best mother, but I think that she is the reason why I didn’t get married. I didn’t want to give up my independence.”
The Something’s Gotta Give star added, “By the way, no one has ever asked me to marry them, either, so that might be a good answer. I should’ve started with that and called it a day.”
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Keaton adopted two children, Dexter and Duke Keaton, when she was in her 50s. She told CBS News of the decision, “A lot of things happened in my life that made me finally decide to adopt. One was, my father was ill. And he died. And I also broke up from a relationship. And I also had to take a long, hard look about what I was going to do with the rest of my life.” (She did not say who the relationship was with.)
The Book Club actor also talked in the interview about her feelings about romantic love differ from those about other types of love. She explained that with age, her thoughts on the matter shifted.
“My feeling about romantic love is that unfortunately, it’s not rooted in the ordinary realistic world. And for a person like me, I was not looking for love as an experience of sharing,” she explained. “It was more of this heightened state when I was younger. And I think that the closer you come to being realistic about love—like, for example, for me in my life at this point, the fact that I have children and that I’m raising children and that it’s been the most profound love experience of life is in fact to be completely rooted in reality.”
She added of the love that comes from a romantic relationship with another person, “You’re in a constant state of problem solving. It’s not like you’re being transported to this other place where people worship you and kiss you and tell you you’re beautiful and all these ridiculous things that just really—I mean, they’re sweet in a moment. But the thing is, you get addicted to that—and that’s not real love to me.”
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