What Ruined Diane Keaton's Romance With Woody Allen
In her new memoir, the actress reveals that she frequently canceled dates to binge eat at home.
Getty Images Diane Keaton won't reveal why she and Woody Allen broke up back in the 70s, but she's not holding back on much else in her 2011 memoir, Then Again.
In the book, the 65-year-old, never-married actress dishes on her romances with "unattainable" men like Al Pacino and Warren Beatty. But, it's her revelations about her relationship with Woody Allen, who she famously co-starred in the 1977 film Annie Hall, that takes the cake.
During the five years Diane and Woody were together, the self-described "neurotic" and insecure actress suffered from intense bulimia that caused her to eat up to 20,000 calories a day.
Frequently, she would cancel dates with Woody in order to stay home and stuff herself with "a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken, several orders of chips with blue cheese and ketchup, a couple of TV dinners, chocolate-covered almonds, a large bottle of 7Up, a pound of peanut brittle, M&Ms, mango juice, one Sara Lee pound cake, and three frozen banana-cream pies." (And that was just dinner!)
"The demands of bulimia," she wrote, "outshone the power of my desire for Woody. Pathetic, but true."
In better moments, Diane writes that she and Woody would walk around New York hand-in-hand and people-watch for hours.
Supposedly, she loved his thick glasses, "cool suits," and self-deprecating way he would tell jokes.
She claims that he loved her "neurotic girl" antics and that he gave her nicknames like "Snookums" and "Monster."
"We shared a love of torturing each other with our failures. He could sling out the insults, and so could I... His insights into my character were dead-on and — duh!— hilarious. I had him pegged as a cockroach you couldn't kill."
Still, while they eventually broke up and went onto other relationships, Diane has retained a deep friendship with the director, wistfully noting:
"I miss Woody. He'd cringe if he knew how much I care about him, but I'm smart enough not to broach the subject. I know he's borderline repulsed by the grotesque nature of my affection...What am I supposed to do? I still love him."
Elizabeth Cullen is a love and entertainment writer.
Editor's Note: This article was originally posted on November 17, 2011 and was updated with the latest information.