While many actors and businessmen are turning their back to Woody Allen after the accuses of sexual assaults moved by Allen’s adopted daughter Dylan, Diane Keaton has consistently backed the writer and director and her support never wavered. She said she would have never stopped believing him.
After all, they shared a long and passionate love story during the 70’s and their friendship, after the breakup, is still as strong as it was 40 years ago.
Diane Keaton and Woody Allen became friends in 1968, during the auditions of “Play It Again, Sam.” She immediately got the main role.
“What I remember about Woody was that he was short and he was cute,”
Keaton said in PBS’s 2011 Woody Allen: A Documentary.
“And that’s what I remembered about Woody and that day is just that, oh, my God, he is… you know, I just had a big crush, instantly.”
The two grew close working on the show. Eventually, they moved in together, and their romance lasted nearly five years.
In her 2011 memoir Then Again, Keaton wrote that the eating disorder she had in her 20s ruined the relationship because she’d try to avoid dates to stay home. Allen didn’t know she was bulimic, but he sent her to a psychoanalyst to help her cope with her insecurity. Keaton grew healthier.
The couple ended their relationship in 1974, but they were soon back together, at least professionally, for movies, including the 1977 Oscar-winning movie Annie Hall, featuring a main character Allen wrote with Keaton in mind. She was surprised to win the 1978 Oscar for best actress for playing what she called, “an affable version of myself.”
Many years later, during the first decade of 2000s, Allen said publicly about her:
“From the minute I met her, she was a great, great inspiration to me. Much of what I have accomplished in my life, I owe for sure to her.”
To Diane, Allen has been the great love of her life.