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Summary
Summary
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
From Academy Award winner and bestselling author Diane Keaton comes a candid, hilarious, and deeply affecting look at beauty, aging, and the importance of staying true to yourself--no matter what anyone else thinks.
Diane Keaton has spent a lifetime coloring outside the lines of the conventional notion of beauty. In Let's Just Say It Wasn't Pretty , she shares the wisdom she's accumulated through the years as a mother, daughter, actress, artist, and international style icon. This is a book only Diane Keaton could write--a smart and funny chronicle of the ups and downs of living and working in a world obsessed with beauty.
In her one-of-a-kind voice, Keaton offers up a message of empowerment for anyone who's ever dreamed of kicking back against the "should"s and "supposed to"s that undermine our pursuit of beauty in all its forms. From a mortifying encounter with a makeup artist who tells her she needs to get her eyes fixed to an awkward excursion to Victoria's Secret with her teenage daughter, Keaton shares funny and not-so-funny moments from her life in and out of the public eye.
For Diane Keaton, being beautiful starts with being true to who you are, and in this book she also offers self-knowing commentary on the bold personal choices she's made through the years: the wide-brimmed hats, outrageous shoes, and all-weather turtlenecks that have made her an inspiration to anyone who cherishes truly individual style--and catnip to paparazzi worldwide. She recounts her experiences with the many men in her life--including Warren Beatty, Jack Nicholson, Al Pacino, and Sam Shepard--shows how our ideals of beauty change as we age, and explains why a life well lived may be the most beautiful thing of all.
Wryly observant and as fiercely original as Diane Keaton herself, Let's Just Say It Wasn't Pretty is a head-turner of a book that holds up a mirror to our beauty obsessions--and encourages us to like what we see.
Praise for Let's Just Say It Wasn't Pretty
"Behind the sterling movie credits and tomboyish wardrobe, we see a soulful and deep woman contemplating the narrative arc of her own life." -- Newsweek
"Delicious writing . . . This book is like a dishy lunch with the movie star you thought you'd never be lucky enough to meet. . . . Diane Keaton is in a class by herself and this book is good for the soul." --Liz Smith, Chicago Tribune
"She's talented, iconic, quirky . . . and wonderfully blunt. This is just a small sampling of the reasons we love Diane Keaton, and they all permeate the pages of her new memoir." --Elle
"As disarming and personable as the actress herself." --The Huffington Post
"Wise, witty, thoughtful, uplifting, the truth, unvarnished--and very funny." -- Toronto Star
Author Notes
Diane Keaton (born Diane Hall; January 5, 1946) is an American film actress, director, producer, and screenwriter. Keaton began her career on stage, and made her screen debut in 1970. Her first major film role was as Kay Adams-Corleone in The Godfather (1972), but the films that shaped her early career were those with director and co-star Woody Allen beginning with Play It Again, Sam in 1972. Her next two films with Allen, Sleeper (1973) and Love and Death (1975), established her as a comic actor. Her fourth, Annie Hall (1977), won her the Academy Award for Best Actress.
Keaton's memoir, entitled Then Again was published by Random House on November 15, 2011. Her next non-fiction book, Let's Just Say It Wasn't Pretty, made the New york times bestseller list in 2014. She continues to star in and direct many popular movies.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Keaton describes her physical imperfections and aging woes in this candid, and occasionally tedious, collection of observations and insights. The veteran actress covers the many aspects of female beauty with a still-youthful voice that is as familiar, lyrical, and charmingly awkward as that of her on-screen persona. She admires pioneering comediennes Phyllis Diller and Joan Rivers, reflects on her relationships with Warren Beatty, Woody Allen, and Al Pacino, and discusses her much-talked-about personal style, her real estate purchases, and her children. Some anecdotes from Keaton's childhood are written in a diarylike style, and she has much to say about her parents, choking with emotion at one point. Keaton sounds confident as she imparts the accumulated wisdom of 67 years, but her introspection periodically segues into stream-of-consciousness patter and oversharing about her children. This is a mixed bag of advice for women and intimate celebrity gossip from an iconic woman admired for her independence and individuality. A Random House hardcover. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
New York Review of Books Review
Celebrities, from Rob Lowe to Diane Keaton, narrate the audiobooks of their memoirs. LET'S BE HONEST: Celebrities don't usually write great memoirs. But the best ones offer up dish and dirt and some sensationally bizarre yarns. I got hooked in my 20s with Desi Arnaz's "A Book" and Kirk Douglas's racy "The Ragman's Son" and Sammy Davis Jr.'s "Yes I Can." Friends might shake their heads at my choices, but did they know that Kirk Douglas seduced an anti-Semitic hotel owner so that he could whisper at the moment of climax that she was in bed with a Jew? You see my point. When actors record the audio versions of their memoirs, the experience of peeking into their lives can be even more intimate. Not all actors excel at narration, however. Sean Pratt, who has been recording books since 1996 and took on the gargantuan task of reading "Infinite Jest" by David Foster Wallace, told me that what works in front of a camera doesn't necessarily translate to the intimacy of a studio and microphone. "It's a whole different kind of performance," he said. "It's jazz. It's bebop. You're always changing the delivery style." Testing Pratt's thesis, and hoping to satisfy my craving for some popcorn listening, I took on four recent audiobooks by actors. Pratt was right: When it works, it's magical. And when it doesn't - well, you know Audible lets you "return" books you hated and get a refund, right? You probably won't be returning Rob Lowe's LOVE LIFE (Simon and Schuster), though. His first memoir, "Stories I Only Tell My Friends" (2011), established him as an engaging riffer with outrageous stories. The new book is more loosely woven, with passages about going on a date with Madonna and his growing love of offbeat roles that undermine his pretty-boy reputation. (Check out what they did to his face in "Behind the Candelabra.") He also touches on politics and his shift from lifelong Democrat to independent voter with a libertarian streak as he found himself supporting Arnold Schwarzenegger's run for governor of California. "Like 'recreational' drug use, the idea of slavish party loyalty seems like an outdated and unhealthy concept," he says. Ultimately, this is a book about being a grown-up - about Lowe loving his wife of more than 20 years, and the emotional turmoil that struck him while dropping off his son at college. Lowe's voice grows husky when he recalls that he used to wrap the boy in a blanket "like a burrito." Some may tear up; I cringed a little. But Lowe is generally smooth and self-assured. He treats listeners to his rendition of the "Ohio Scream," a bloodcurdling shriek that plays a part in a campfire prank in which he dresses up as Bigfoot. Wackiness ensues. A groin is kicked. It is his. A different kind of pain runs through HANDBOOK FOR AN UNPREDICTABLE LIFE: How I Survived Sister Renata and My Crazy Mother, and Still Came Out Smiling (With Great Hair) (Random House). Rosie Perez takes the reader through her rags-to-riches story with great energy. Perez was abandoned by her mother for her first three years of life. The mother later reclaimed little Rosie only to place her in an orphanage. Perez would visit her mother's home occasionally, where there was no warmth but plenty of violence, and a half-brother who she says sexually assaulted her. Perez learned to live with adversity, and even to thrive. At the orphanage, she made friends with girls with names like Crazy Cindy and Puerto Rican-Jew Evita Feinstein. They survived the fierce tutelage of some very tough nuns, who maintained discipline with beatings. Little wonder that years later, Perez would receive a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder. Perez was entranced by television and music, and was mad for "Soul Train" and the movies of Woody Allen and Neil Simon. She also gets to know her father, a brazen ladies' man who introduced her to the wonders of his native Puerto Rico. Eventually her love of dancing lands her a gig on "Soul Train" and a career as a choreographer before Spike Lee cast her in "Do the Right Thing." That film provides one of the book's funniest scenes. Her father took his friends, family and pastor to see the movie. But Rosie hadn't warned him about her nude scene, which incidentally involved ice cubes. "When the ice cube scene came on, my father gasped, jumped up, grabbed his heart, and fell out cold - no lie!" It turned out to be a panic attack; he asked her to warn him in the future when she makes an "'artistic' film." "Handbook" is a careering ride, crowded with family struggles and reconciliation and therapy-inflected observations. Perez says of her siblings, "We were kids that were all abused and didn't know how to articulate all the pain and anger." The cuteness can pile on at times, with memories of happy moments in childhood - whether watching television in the orphanage or getting a treat - punctuated with "Yay!" which she pronounces "Yayee!" Moments of pride are followed by "Holla!" Her delivery can be uneven, her spoken rhythm occasionally falters. But those are small flaws in an uplifting and enjoyable debut. Diane Keaton's new book, LET'S JUST SAY IT WASN'T PRETTY (Random House), follows up her first memoir, the well-received "Then Again" (2011). This one is more scattershot. Ostensibly a meditation on the nature of beauty, it chronicles the development of Keaton's distinctive fashion sense and her thoughts on the body. She engages in long arguments with herself and falls into digressions. She folds in memories from her childhood, muses on raising her two children and discusses the meaning she's found in renovating homes. If you ever suspected that her dizzy otherworldliness is an act, you will be reassured of her sincerity after reading that she trips and breaks her toe while walking the dog because "I decided to try the advice of Dr. Tan, my acupuncturist, and take a backward walk with Emmie in an effort to employ the underutilized part of my brain." The book is most lively when she describes her relationship with Woody Allen, who early on told her that she would always do well in show business. "You're funny, and funny is money." He leaves voice mail messages for her in which he calls her "half-wit" and says, "The Golden Globes wanted to know where I could find someone stupid enough to come and pick up my Cecil B. DeMille Award, and all of a sudden it occurred to me, I don't know why, but your face in a beekeeper's hat came to mind." He closes a follow-up message with, "Worm, call me back." She refers to this fondly as a "healinghumor, funny-is-money phone call from Woody." If you say so, Diane. Her narration elevates the work; the warmth of that famous voice brings bubble and flow to the prose. You get the feeling that she could be a terrific audiobook narrator if she had better material. The surprise charmer of the stack is the memoir by Judy Greer, I DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU KNOW ME FROM: Confessions of a Co-Star (Random House), a grab bag of essays by a comic actress who has appeared in more than 90 movies and television shows, but whom few people might be able to identify. (She refers to herself as "the ultimate best friend.") Her stories are sweetly weird and scatological, such as her night at the Oscars when she decides she has to take off her Spanx or lose her mind. This effort lands her in a toilet stall wrestling with her undergarments and wondering what would happen if the Big One, that predicted earthquake, were to strike. She fantasizes the news story: "Recognizable actress whose name we can't place is found naked in the rubble that was once the bathroom of the Kodak Theater." Her voice, zinging somewhere between chipper and chipmunk, might grate on the ears of some listeners. But for people searching for a loyal gal pal, this could be just the thing. My long voyage through the seas of four me-me-me memoirs was done; I'd gorged on fluff. After finishing the last book, I was ready for "Moby-Dick" - a version I'd been saving, narrated by the great Frank Muller. Did you know that Ahab's last words were taken from a Star Trek movie? Wait. Reverse that. Maybe I've been spending a little too much time with Hollywood. JOHN SCHWARTZ is a national correspondent for The Times and the author of "Oddly Normal."
Kirkus Review
A breezy little volume by an actress facing old age with aplomb.Now in her late 60s, Keaton, an Academy Award winner in 1977 for her role inWoody AllensAnnie Hall, sprinkles memories of her long career, including her friendships and more with certain leading men, into a mishmash of thoughts about childhood, beauty and parenting.The authors attitude toward her own physical flawsdrooping eyes, a less-than-perfect nose, thinning hairis meant to be reassuring to self-critical female readers. There is a rationale behind the omnipresent hats, tinted glasses and turtlenecks that other women might consider, but Keatons message is that everyone should do their own thing. Never married, she is raising two adopted children, now teenagers, who figure prominently in the narrative. Even movie stars, it seems, have ordinary parenting problems and bad days. Woven into the domestic scenes are recollections of film roles and fellow actors. Readers looking for chitchat about celebrities will be gratified;Keaton drops plenty of names, although at times, they seem to be somewhat forcefully injected into her narrative. The author is generous in her comments about others, giving full credit to her longtime friend Allen for launching her career and speaking well of the leading men in her life.For the record, Keaton reports thatWarren Beatty, her co-star inReds, had a pretty face, but Al Pacino, with whom she acted in theGodfatherfilms, had a beautiful one.There are no illustrations; however, Keatons eye for detail makes them unnecessary.One caveat: The text is exceedingly brief, an afternoons read at best.The type is heavily leaded to fill out the pages, giving the impression that theres more than is being delivered.Light entertainment from a witty woman. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
Keaton's new book is less a traditional memoir than a collection of musings loosely grouped around the idea of beauty. The audiobook is read by Keaton, and while hearing her words delivered in her own quirky, exuberant voice increases the intimacy and charm of the book, listeners who are not avid fans of the actress may find this collection a bit rambling and unfocused. As well, those looking for juicy insights into Keaton's past and relationships will be disappointed, since there is nothing here that wasn't covered in her previous and more cohesive and moving book, That Was Then. Keaton is candid regarding her feelings for the men in her life without being gossipy and that is to be admired, as is her ability to be honest about the challenges of oversharing personal information about her children. VERDICT The most appealing parts of this book are often the peeks into the more quotidian moments of Keaton's life, and the interesting parts of her memoir may not be her thoughts on beauty but the picture that develops of an unconventional life lived by a truly unique woman.-Heather Malcolm, Bow, WA (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
Prisoners on My Wall As I throw my coat on the chair, I see Alexander Gardner's 1865 portrait of Abraham Lincoln hanging on my living room wall. My first impression of President Lincoln came from a book I checked out of the Bushnell Way Elementary School library, Abe Lincoln: Log Cabin to White House, by Sterling North. In it President Lincoln fought to free the slaves. He was a great man who paid the ultimate price. Mr. North described Pres-ident Lincoln as unsightly, even homely. To a ten-year-old girl, that meant President Lincoln was ugly. I didn't understand how an ugly man could become the president of the United States. Gardner's photograph, taken just days before Lincoln was shot in Ford's Theatre, contradicts North's description of a man who got shortchanged in the looks department. Dominated by a pair of eyes set in darkness, Lincoln's face is magnificent. His left eye, engaged by what it sees, looks out with endless empathy, while his right eye tells a story that is harder to comprehend. The bottom half of his face, framed by two deep lines, singles out his prominent nose, but it's those eyes, particularly the left eye, the caring eye, the engaged eye, that is so compelling. Or is it? As my own eyes drift across Lincoln's wide forehead, I look back into the right eye, the one drawn toward reflection, and you know what I see? I see the darkness of a great calling. Did President Lincoln's face become magnificent because he accepted a grave responsibility that would lead to a tragic end? Or was it the angle of Mr. Gardner's pose, the light, the patina? Was it good luck or a fortunate mistake? After living with Mr. Lincoln's portrait for several years, I've come to this conclusion: his beauty, like the hidden cast of his right eye, became identifiable only after I included "unsightly" as a possible way of describing a beautiful face. Sharing wall space with Abraham Lincoln are forty-seven other portraits of men I've collected over twenty-five years. I call them my prisoners. There's Robert Mapplethorpe's portrait of the artist Francesco Clemente, who presents his hands from under a black coat. There's Marion Robert Morrison's face before he became John Wayne. On the bottom left, Tony Ward is painted with mud. His hands frame his eyes. Maybe he's sick of looking out from under the dirt. Maybe he doesn't want to be painted into a shadow; maybe he's tired of being Herb Ritts's favorite model. The face of the Russian revolutionary and poet Vladimir Mayakovsky stares out in shaved-head resistance. He brings up longings. I'd carry his coattails. I'd be his lackey. Next to the kitchen door, Elvis Presley is sticking his tongue into a young woman's mouth. I never understood why he made millions of girls cry until I saw Albert Wertheimer's Kiss in an ad for Sam Shepard's play Fool for Love . Which brings up Sam Shepard, who is framed dead center among the other prisoners on my wall. I was thirty-one when I went to a matinee of Terrence Malick's Days of Heaven at Cinema 1 on Third Avenue between Fifty-ninth and Sixtieth Streets in Manhattan. The movie seemed to glide though a brilliantly lit travelogue until Sam Shepard walked onto the screen and took my breath away. His face bore the imprint of the West in all its barren splendor. For years, I followed Sam's life from the safety of distance, a fan's distance. He was the playwright of Buried Child and True West. He worked with Bob Dylan. He was married. He fell out of marriage, and into love with Jessica Lange. He wrote, "When you're looking for someone, you're looking for some aspect of yourself, even if you don't know it. What we're searching for is what we lack." And that's the way it was. Some aspect of him was an aspect in me, an aspect I hadn't developed, something I lacked. Or so I thought. As life would have it, Sam slipped into the background until ten years later, when I inadvertently came across his face on a fifty-cent eight-by-ten glossy I bought at the Rose Bowl swap meet. The photograph was not exceptional except for one thing: Sam's face. That damn face. A day doesn't go by without a glance his way. Gary Cooper also came to me in motion, but he wasn't beautiful. What he was, was old. I saw him walking a dusty town's deserted street toward four killers in Fred Zinnemann's 1952 motion picture High Noon . The movie was told in "real time," a time where events happened at the same rate that my ten-year-old eyes experienced them. Everything about the movie seemed super real. On Gary Cooper's wedding day to Grace Kelly, he had a choice: he could either ride into the horizon with his pretty new bride or stay and face the killers. As a girl I didn't think about Gary Cooper's looks, or the difference between Grace Kelly's age and his. I didn't care. Would he ever see her again? Would he die? Did he have to be so brave? I remember their goodbye. I remember Tex Ritter singing "Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darlin'." I remember crying. Looks weren't the issue. Courage was. I didn't know that courage was a form of beauty, but I must have felt it. Imagine my surprise when I discovered Cecil Beaton's photograph of a thirty-year-old drop-dead-gorgeous Gary Cooper. Beaton did more than document the awe-inspiring good looks; he somehow captured Gary Cooper's awkward lack of calculation, his sweetness. Sometimes I compare the portraits of Gary Cooper and Sam Shepard. One photograph is of a man my age, still alive, still Sam. The other is an image of a legend I never met. Gary Cooper's photograph is the work of an artist. Sam Shepard's photograph is just another glossy eight-by-ten. Both, however, set off memories of milestone moments in movie theaters. John Wayne's is the youngest, most irresistible face framed behind glass. It's ironic that he would become the ultimate symbol of the American male. There's no hint of aspiration in his expression. He seems almost perplexed by the idea that someone is taking his picture. How could a football player from Glendale have imagined donning a big old ten-gallon hat for some guy with a Rolleiflex dangling around his neck? Before Gary Cooper and Sam Shepard, it was John Wayne, the Duke, who would walk through the western landscape and into the heart of Joan Didion, who describes him best: "We went three and four afternoons a week, sat on folding chairs in the darkened Quonset hut which served as a theater, and it was there, that summer of 1943 while the hot wind blew outside, that I first saw John Wayne. Saw the walk, heard the voice. Heard him tell the girl in a picture called War of the Wildcats that he would build her a house, 'at the bend in the river where the cottonwoods grow.' As it happened I did not grow up to be the kind of woman who is the heroine in a Western, and although the men I have known have had many virtues and have taken me to live in many places I have come to love, they have never been John Wayne, and they have never taken me to that bend in the river where the cottonwoods grow. Deep in that part of my heart where the artificial rain forever falls that is still the line I wait to hear." All three men came and went as they walked through time on the screen. All three acted out stories written for the entertainment of the masses, particularly women like me. All three are icons. Now they're incarcerated on my wall, where their beauty continues to evolve. Gary Cooper, John Wayne, and Sam Shepard still take me to Joan Didion's "bend in the river where the cottonwoods grow." They still give me hope for a house that can never be--a home that exists only in my dreams. Warren Beatty is not one of the prisoners on my wall. He is a person I loved in real time, not reel, and not in a photograph. Real-life Warren was a collector's item, a rare bird. He lived in a three-room, eight-hundred-square-foot penthouse on top of the Beverly Wilshire hotel. Littered with books and scripts, the place was not fancy. Yet he owned an unfinished Art Deco estate on a hilltop, and he claimed he was going to make it his home. He was always late and always meeting people, and always, always, always working on a script. He had aspirations I couldn't begin to contemplate. You have to remember, I was Annie Hall. At that point I was happy to act in movies, not produce, star, and direct them while contemplating a political career. One moment Warren was stunning, especially from the right side; the next, I couldn't figure out what all the fuss was about. These variables kept me curious. Was he a beauty or wasn't he? Yes. Warren was a beauty. That stood out with particular intensity during our bittersweet breakup. And wouldn't you know it, it revolved around a photograph I saved but couldn't find to put on my wall. I was in Germany working on George Roy Hill's The Little Drummer Girl in the early eighties. It was a difficult shoot. Picking me to play a British actress who finds herself embroiled in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was bad casting. Picture the poster: a silhouette of Diane Keaton with unusually well-endowed curves leaning against a semiautomatic rifle. Today you can buy it on eBay for a dollar ninety-nine, which is just about what The Little Drummer Girl made at the box office. No matter how hard I tried to look butch holding an Uzi assault weapon or to master an English accent, I failed. To make matters worse, Warren and I weren't speaking. On my days off, I would wander around Munich feeling sorry for myself. One Sunday at a flea market I came across a big picture book on the films of Warren Beatty. I bought it. Back in the hotel room, I cut out a picture of Warren from Bonnie and Clyde, folded it into small squares, put Warren in my jacket pocket, and brought him to work the next day. Before a particularly emotional scene, I took it out, unfolded Warren, and touched his face with my fingers. When I put my lips to his, all those months of straining for a crumb of feeling came flooding back. That's what Warren's face on the page of a broken-down book printed on cheap paper did to me before I shot a scene from The Little Drummer Girl . At some point I lost the photo. In a way, I'm glad I did. It doesn't belong with my other convicts. Warren was not a fantasy to ponder. I knew him well. He was not a mystery to contemplate. Sometimes I wonder if he enjoyed his beauty. Did he like what the mirror reflected? He knew that his pretty face, set on that masculine body, blessed with a great mind, would continue to seduce legions of women with incredible success decade after decade after decade. But did he know that, like all gifts, it came with a price tag? Excerpted from Let's Just Say It Wasn't Pretty by Diane Keaton All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.