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Woody Allen honored his ex Diane Keaton just days after her sudden death.
The director reminisced about working with Keaton on several of his films, turning to her for advice throughout his career and their short-lived relationship in an emotional essay published by The Free Press Sunday.
“Unlike anyone the planet has experienced or is unlikely to ever see again, her face and laugh illuminated any space she entered,” he wrote, going on to note that their first encounter was when she auditioned for him and David Merrick for a role in “Play It Again, Sam.”
“She came in and read for us and knocked us both for a loop,” he recalled.
After she landed the part, Allen and Keaton took a while to warm up to each other because they were both shy.
“By chance we took a break at the same moment and wound up sharing a fast bite at some Eighth Avenue joint,” Allen said. “That was our first moment of personal contact. The upshot is that she was so charming, so beautiful, so magical, that I questioned my sanity. I thought: ‘Could I be in love so quickly?'”
After swiftly becoming “lovers,” Allen privately confided in her the script for his first film, “Take the Money and Run.”
While the filmmaker said he was prepared for Keaton to tell him that the script was “a total failure,” she instead let him know that his writing was “very funny and very original.”
“Its success proved her correct and I never doubted her judgment again,” he wrote. “I showed her every film I made after that and grew to care only about her appraisals.
“As time went on, I made movies for an audience of one, Diane Keaton,” he added.
Allen, 89, said that he ignored all reviews of his movies and only cared what Keaton had to say.
“If she liked it, I counted the film as an artistic success. If she was less than enthusiastic, I tried to use her criticism to reedit and come away with something she felt better about,” he said, noting that they were living together at that point.
Allen complimented Keaton’s many talents, including acting, dancing, singing, photography, writing books, collage-making, interior design and film directing.
“Finally, she was a million laughs to be around,” he said.
While Keaton was shy and self-effacing, Allen noted that she was “totally secure in her own aesthetic judgment” and “it was her own feeling that she went with.”
Allen praised her famous fashion sense, calling her style “a sight to behold.”
“Her sartorial concoctions rivaled the contraptions of Rube Goldberg,” he wrote, referring to the cartoonist. “She put together clothing that defied logic but always worked. In later years, her look became more elegant.”
He also touched on Keaton’s eating disorder, which she addressed in her 2011 memoir.
“We’d go to Knicks games and after to Frankie and Johnnie’s for a steak,” he said. “She’d put away a sirloin, hash browns, marble cheesecake, and coffee. Then we’d get home, and moments later she’d be toasting waffles or packing a huge taco with pork. I would stand there, stunned.”
Even though they lived together, it was years later that he learned of her struggle with bulimia.
“But when I was experiencing it, I could only think I’d never seen anyone eat like that outside of a documentary on whales,” he joked.
Despite all of Keaton’s genius taste in the arts and theater (like her impressive art collecting featuring a Cy Twombly), Allen described her as “a hick, a rube, a hayseed.”
“I should’ve realized it from the start,” he wrote. “When I first dated her, I would look into her eyes over candlelight and tell her how beautiful she was. She would stare back and say, “Honest Injun?” Honest Injun? Who speaks like that unless you’re in an ‘Our Gang’ comedy?”
But Keaton eventually went on to be an “award-winning actress and sophisticated fashion icon,” he said.
“We had a few great personal years together and finally we both moved on, and why we parted only God and Freud might be able to figure out,” he wrote.
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Allen — who married his wife Soon-Yi Previn in 1997 — said that Keaton went on to date several “exciting” men that were “more fascinating” than him.
In the conclusion of his essay, the Hollywood writer wrote that Keaton’s passing has “redefined” the world.
“A few days ago the world was a place that included Diane Keaton. Now it’s a world that does not. Hence, it’s a drearier world,” he wrote. “Still, there are her movies. And her great laugh still echoes in my head.”
A source claimed that Allen was “extremely distraught” when he learned that Keaton had died in California on Oct. 11. She was 79.
Allen and Keaton dated for only a few years, but she starred in a number of his movies, including 1997’s “Annie Hall” — for which she won the Oscar for Best Actress.
She also starred in his acclaimed films “Sleeper,” “Love and Death,” “Interiors” and more.
Keaton famously stood by Allen’s side in 2018 after he was repeatedly accused of child molestation.
“Woody Allen is my friend and I continue to believe him,” Keaton wrote on social media at the time.
Keaton’s health reportedly rapidly declined before her passing as the cause of her death remains unknown.
English (US)