Diane Keaton kept a largely private life until her death. Although the Something’s Gotta Give star, who passed away in California at 79, according to a family spokesperson, did not reveal any significant health problems in her final months, she had previously spoken about battling cancer and bulimia during her life.
Her trademark hats were more than a style choice; she became diligent about sun protection after a skin cancer diagnosis at 21.
“It’s a family history,” she told the Los Angeles Times in 2015. “I remember my Auntie Martha had skin cancer so bad they removed her nose. My father had basal skin cancer, and my brother had it. It’s tricky with this skin cancer. That’s why you’ve got to put the sunblock on.”
Still, Keaton, whose cause of death has not been disclosed, only began taking proper care of her skin later in life.
“In my twenties I wasn’t careful,” she admitted. “I didn’t do the research and didn’t care that it was foolish; it followed me through adulthood.
I only took sun care seriously in my forties.” After battling basal cell carcinoma in her twenties, she was later diagnosed with squamous cell cancer decades later, requiring two surgeries, the Times reports.
Besides her cancer fight, Keaton has also spoken about another health issue: bulimia. She said she became self-conscious after being told to lose 10 pounds for a Broadway role when she was young. “All I did was feed my hunger, so I am an addict,” she told Dr. Oz in 2014. “It’s true. I’m a person with substance abuse disorder in recovery; I’ll always be an addict. I have an addictive nature to me.”
For The Family Stone, she ate up to 20,000 calories a day and vomited: a bucket of chicken, fries with blue cheese and ketchup, TV dinners, a quart of soda, pounds of candy, a cake, and three banana cream pies.
Keaton later entered recovery. “Somebody mentioned that I seemed to have some mental issues, so I went to an analyst,” she said, adding she initially lied but later opened up.
Keaton, who adopted daughter Dexter, 29, and son Duke, 25, in her 50s, wrote in her 2011 memoir Then Again, “I have nothing to hide… I’m a sister to all the women… who have had some kind of eating disorder.”
