Oct. 21, 2025, Published 6:53 p.m. ET
Diane Keaton’s reflections on love and solitude have resurfaced in the wake of her death, shedding light on the Annie Hall star’s lifelong decision never to marry – a choice RadarOnline.com can reveal she described as both freeing and lonely.
The Oscar-winning actress, who died on October 12 at the age of 79 after a period of declining health, spent her six-decade career redefining what it meant to be a woman in Hollywood – fiercely independent, unconventional, and unapologetically single.
A Trailblazing Career in Film
Keaton, known for her trademark turtlenecks and wry humor, was confirmed dead in Los Angeles after what friends said had been a “quiet but difficult” few months. Her final film role was in the 2024 comedy Nora.
Keaton’s career spanned from The Godfather trilogy and Annie Hall – for which she won her 1977 Academy Award – to Baby Boom, Father of the Bride, The Family Stone, and Something’s Gotta Give. Yet it was her personal life, notably her refusal to marry, that became a defining part of her legacy.
In 2019, she said: “I don’t think it would have been a good idea for me to have married, and I’m really glad I didn’t, and I’m sure they’re happy about it, too.”
Her ability to remain independent while still deeply introspective about love and connection made her one of Hollywood’s most relatable and admired icons.
Love, Fame, and the Men Who Shaped Her
The actress’ romantic history reads like a roll call of Hollywood’s most magnetic men.
In the 1970s, she began a relationship with her Godfather co-star Al Pacino, whose intensity both captivated and overwhelmed her. Friends said the couple’s on-and-off relationship lasted nearly a decade. They split in the early 1990s, reportedly after Keaton realized Pacino “was never going to be the marrying type.”
Before that, she had a brief but passionate affair with director Woody Allen, whose collaborations with her—including Annie Hall and Manhattan—defined an era of American cinema.
In 1981, she dated Warren Beatty after starring opposite him in Reds.
Reflecting on her famous partners, Keaton once joked her biggest mistake was “falling in love with people I worked with.” But she spoke more seriously about what kept her single.
“Today I was thinking about this… 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,” she said.
Why Marriage Never Fit Her
Keaton often poignantly described herself as “strange,” adding she had always lacked the “maternal aspect” and “nurturing” instincts she believed a husband would require.
“I’m an odd ball,” she said. “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.’ And I thought, ‘I don’t want to be a wife. No.'”
Keaton later acknowledged how her youthful pursuit of artistic, charismatic men had shaped her choices. “When I was young, I was looking to be loved by these extraordinary people,” she said. “I think I should not have been so seduced by talent. When you’re both doing the same job, it’s not so great. I should have found just a nice human being, kind of a family guy.”
Finding Family on Her Own Terms
Still, Keaton built the family she wanted on her own terms. She adopted two children – daughter Dex, now 29, and son Duke, 25 – in her 50s, after years of insisting motherhood was “never an urge I couldn’t resist.”
Speaking to Ladies Home Journal in 2008, she said: “I didn’t think that I was ever going to be prepared to be a mother. 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.”
Her friends said she remained close to Pacino until the end, even as she cherished her solitude – a life lived, as one colleague put it, “on her own terms, exactly as she wanted, with or without a husband.”
https://radaronline.com/p/diane-keaton-why-never-married-hollywood-icon-reveals-truth/
