Quote of the Day (Diane Keaton, on Being 'Uninteresting')

“Choosing the freedom to be uninteresting never quite worked for me.”—Actress-director-memoirist Diane Keaton, Then Again (2011)

Nobody who has worked with her or seen her performances onscreen could ever lob an accusation of “uninteresting” at Diane Keaton, born 75 years ago today in Los Angeles.

Utterly idiosyncratic, the actress has put some people off with her mannerisms and overall quirkiness. But look past that and you’ll see an actress unafraid to defy convention or to challenge herself.

Although much of her fame in the 1970s derived from her comedies with Woody Allen (including her Oscar-winning title role in the semi-autobiographical Annie Hall), these were interspersed with dramas in which she invested her characters with increasing depth and complexity (notably, The Godfather II, Looking for Mr. Goodbar, Reds, and The Good Mother).

The daughter of an amateur photographer, she has honed her eye for startling visuals with photography books of her own, as well as with her work as director for the small screen (China Beach, Twin Peaks) and the big one (Unstrung Heroes).

In the last decade, she has taken to writing, exploring the fragility of love (the most prominent past men in her life include Allen, Warren Beatty and Al Pacino), the inextricable bonds of immediate family and the endurance of memory in a trio of memoirs: Then Again, Let's Just Say It Wasn't Pretty and Brother and Sister.