Diane Keaton’s four year battle with bulimia in her twenties saw her duck out of dates with Woody Allen to secretly binge 20,000 calories a day

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Diane Keaton called her battle with bulimia in her twenties ‘the lowest point in my life’.

The actress passed away at age 79, and the cause of death has not been revealed. She kept a four-year struggle with an eating disorder private until discussing it in her 2011 memoir. In the book, she expressed solidarity with others facing similar challenges, saying she felt connected to anyone who had experienced an eating disorder, regardless of gender, and considered herself one of them.

Keaton, age 22, developed an eating disorder after being cast as the lead in the 1968 Broadway show *Hair*. The role came with a requirement that she lose ten pounds.

While the comment likely triggered her intense focus on her weight, Keaton eventually understood through therapy that she’d actually been unhappy with her body image since her teenage years.

When she was 14, she tried to fix a bump on her nose by sleeping with hair clips on it. Later in life, she became known for wearing a bowler hat and baggy clothes, which she admitted was a way to conceal her figure.

Her unique personality and struggles were evident both in her personal life and on screen, but she considered her fight with bulimia to be the most difficult time of her life.

Keaton didn’t speak out on the eating disorder until her 2011 memoir Then Again.

Written with her mother, Dorothy Hall – who, like Keaton, kept detailed journals – the book explores both their perspectives on the actress’s struggles with an eating disorder.

Dorothy worried about her daughter’s constant snacking – she was always eating, either chewing a large bite or sucking on candy. Dorothy even wrote in her diary that she couldn’t understand how her daughter remained so slender.

Honestly, it broke my heart hearing Keaton talk about her bulimia. She just… laid it all out there. She said it stemmed from feeling insecure as a kid, and she was so firm about taking responsibility. Even when talking about the director of *Hair* pressuring her to lose weight, she wouldn’t let anyone else take the blame – it was all on her, she insisted. It was incredibly raw and, if I’m being honest, made me admire her even more.

She remembered losing a significant amount of weight for a role and successfully maintaining that loss for a year – a choice she’d made herself. She then overheard another actress discussing someone who was making herself ill to stay thin, and from that moment on, she became skilled at concealing things.

When Diane was struggling with bulimia, she would sometimes eat as many as 20,000 calories in a single day and then make herself vomit to get rid of the food.

She was seeing Woody Allen, but often left their dates with flimsy excuses so she could rush back to her New York apartment and eat enormous amounts of food.

When she wasn’t feeling her best, she remembered meals consisting of a lot of unhealthy food – things like a bucket of fried chicken, multiple orders of fries with dips, a couple of frozen dinners, a large soda, lots of candy, an entire cake, and even three banana cream pies.

She used to start her day with a huge breakfast: a dozen muffins, three fried eggs, bacon, pancakes, and chocolate milk. Lunch was equally substantial – three buttered steaks with baked potatoes – and she’d finish it all off with apple pie and two chocolate sundaes.

Repeatedly overeating followed by purging severely damaged her health, leading to issues like low blood pressure, heartburn, and over twenty cavities.

It was Allen who would persude her to seek help.

Even though the filmmaker wasn’t aware of Keaton’s eating disorder, he strongly believed in the benefits of therapy and encouraged her to see a psychiatrist. She ultimately attended sessions five days a week for a year and a half.

In a later interview with Ellen DeGeneres, Keaton described overcoming her eating disorder, explaining that she simply reached a point where she no longer wanted to binge eat.

She attributed her progress to her therapy, explaining that simply talking about her thoughts and feelings helped her take ownership of them. She felt that voicing her experiences was the key to understanding and processing them.

‘To keep secrets doesn’t help you at all.’

Keaton acknowledged that therapy wasn’t a perfect solution. Instead of addressing the root of her issues, she focused her intense personality on other compulsive behaviors like shopping and collecting things.

She shared that she keeps around sixty scrapbooks filled with pictures she’s collected from magazines – everything from fashion ideas to images of bedrooms and portraits. She also has an entire room devoted to her hats.

In a 2014 interview, she candidly discussed her struggles with addiction, admitting she has an addictive personality. She explained that she consistently gave in to her impulses, leading her to identify as an addict – someone in recovery who will always be predisposed to addictive behaviors.

Despite her success, she still struggled with self-doubt, admitting that things don’t necessarily become simpler with age.

The issue feels increasingly urgent because it deals with death – facing our own mortality and how we handle that stage of life. It’s something everyone naturally avoids thinking about.

If you need support or information about eating disorders, you can reach Beat Eating Disorders in the UK at 0808 8010677 or visit their website at beateatingdisorders.org.uk. For resources in the US, please visit NationalEatingDisorders.org.

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2025-10-13 14:35