NEED TO KNOW
- Diane Keaton died at age 79 in California, PEOPLE confirmed exclusively on Oct. 11
- The Oscar winner previously said she was “really glad” she never married
- In her 50s, Keaton welcomed a son and daughter through adoption
Diane Keaton had plenty of high-profile romances — but she never wanted to be a wife.
The Oscar winner — who died at age 79 in California — opened up to PEOPLE in 2019 about embracing her independence.
“Today I was thinking about this,” she said about marriage. “I’m 73 and I think I’m the only one in my generation, and maybe before, who has been a single woman all her life.”
While she had long-term relationships with Al Pacino, Warren Beatty and Woody Allen, among others, Keaton underscored that it would not “have been a good idea for me to have married.”
“I’m really glad I didn’t, and I’m sure they’re happy about it, too,” she added about her famous exes.
Keaton explained her stance on marriage went all the way back to her teenage years. “I remember one day in high school, this guy came up to me and said, ‘One day you’re going to make a good wife,'” she recalled. “And I thought, ‘I don’t want to be a wife. No.'”
When asked about dating in her later years, Keaton always insisted she was happier being single.
“I don’t date,” she told AARP The Magazine in 2023, adding that it was “highly unlikely” she would pursue another relationship. “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.”
Though she never wed, Keaton welcomed two children, daughter Dexter, 29, and son Duke, 25, through adoption when she was in her 50s.
“I didn’t think that I was ever going to be prepared to be a mother,” she previously told Ladies’ Home Journal. “Motherhood was not an urge I couldn’t resist. It was more like a thought I’d been thinking for a very long time. So I plunged in.”
Both of Keaton’s children have largely stayed out of the spotlight, only making rare appearances to support their mom during milestone career moments.
“They have no interest in what I do, which I think is very healthy,” Keaton said in 2007 of Dexter and Duke, who joined her to celebrate her Hand & Footprint Ceremony in 2022. “We live a relatively normal — well, sort of normal — life.”
Read the full article here
