The Original

Universally adored actor Diane Keaton’s individuality can be matched only by her enthusiasm for hats—and she wears many of them

- Sarah Cristobal

In May, Diane Keaton posted a particularly quirky video on her Instagram account that pretty much served as the impetus for this shoot. In it she is descending a stairwell in her Los Angeles home, wearing a checked blazer cinched by a thick black belt, black pants, loosely tied combat boots and not one but maybe 10 hats stacked on top of each other. “Which hat do you think I should wear?” she asks no-one in particular. The five-second clip has since accrued 631,000-plus views and nearly 3,500 comments from supportive fans and friends such as Michelle Pfeiffer and Candice Bergen.

Of course, over the past several decades, Keaton, forever our Annie Hall, has worn many chapeaus—as an Oscar-winning actor, a prolific author, a style connoisseur, a winemaker, a constant house-flipper and a mum to two (Dexter, 23, and Duke, 18, both of whom she adopted in her fifties).

Sitting in that same house a month later for this interview, Keaton, 73, is friendly and inviting. She gets animated over things such as her polka-dot manicure and her neighbour’s horses, but ask her anything remotely to do with the word “icon” or “legacy” and she’ll start deflecting. And therein lies the paradox: Keaton is a leading lady who’d rather talk about the bricks she hand-picked for her dream home than about how hard she worked to secure its contents. What can you do? She’s a Hollywood original, and that’s why she gets to wear all the hats.

INSTYLE: You styled yourself for this shoot. Is it empowering to have a certain look that you’ve been able to cultivate? DIANE KEATON: “I don’t think of it as empowering.”