The one mistake in 1990 Diane Keaton swore she’d never make again: “I tried that, and I hated it”
When Diane Keaton passed away last year, it was clear just what a memorable legacy she was leaving behind. Countless major names lined up to pay their tributes to an actor who wasn’t just an Academy Award winner, but a trailblazer and one of the finest comedic presences in Hollywood history.
And although she will go down in the annals of moviemaking as an iconic actor, thanks to her work on movies like Annie Hall and The Godfather, she also turned her hand to directing, starting off with the music promo for Belinda Carlisle’s massive hit ‘Heaven is a Place on Earth’ as far back as 1987.
While she went on to do two more videos for the singer, probably the most interesting of the projects Keaton directed over a 15-year period was an episode of David Lynch’s bizarre horror mystery Twin Peaks in 1991, specifically one from the second season named ‘Slaves and Masters’. It represented one of Keaton’s first mainstream projects behind the camera, and it came a year after a movie in which she tried being a producer and couldn’t stand it.
While some of her acting peers were happy to have their name attached to movies as executive producers, that wasn’t something that interested Keaton, telling the LA Times in 1992, “I tried that, and I hated it [on the 1990 rom-com, The Lemon Sisters]. There’s nothing about me that is produce-orial. To pick up the phone? To close a deal? I can’t close anything!”
Instead, after Twin Peaks, she took on her first TV movie as director called Wildflower, a heartstring-tugger starring a young Reese Witherspoon about a deaf girl, and then four years later her first mainstream Hollywood release, a comedy titled Unstrung Heroes that starred Andie Macdowell and future Severance actor John Turturro.
The story of a young man leaving his parental home after tragedy and moving in with his dysfunctional uncles, it was a moderate success in 1995, attracting some good reviews, especially for Keaton’s directing, and brought in almost $8million at the box office.
Despite the positive feedback, Keaton still preferred life in front of the camera, adding, “I’m not in heaven when I’m directing, but I love it. I love that when you’re preparing, it’s all about creating this new world, it’s all visual. Then, when you start shooting, it’s about falling in love with the actors. For me, it is not about control.”
Perhaps it was surprising then that she only went on to direct one more film in her career, in 2000, when she helmed the Meg Ryan comedy Hanging Up, which didn’t fare as well with critics. Equally surprising was the fact that her opinion on being a producer evidently softened, and she was listed as a producer on 13 different TV shows and movies all the way up until 2024’s Summer Camp, where she co-starred with Eugene Levy and Kathy Bates.
That film, about three older women who try to relive their childhoods by heading off on a summer camping retreat, was not one of Keaton’s career highlights and currently sports a Rotten Tomatoes rating of just 8%. She will, of course, be remembered for far more notable work than that, not least 1996’s First Wives Club, which turns 30 this year and a sequel to which was in development before her sad death in October 2025.
