Diane Keaton Says She Was Bulimic While Dating Woody Allen

Diane Keaton and Woody Allen in a still from "Annie Hall."

Diane Keaton, bulimic? It’s hard to picture the self-assured woman of wit abusing her mind and body, but in her new memoir “Then Again,” out today, the actress reveals that she binged and purged for years while dating Woody Allen.

According to the Daily Mail, Keaton writes about trying to leave dates with the filmmaker so she could go home and consume “barely imaginable quantities of food.” Dinner was a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken, several orders of fries, TV dinners, all kinds of candy, a Sara Lee pound cake and three frozen banana-cream pies. Afterwards, she’d make herself throw up.

“The demands of bulimia,” she writes, according to the Daily Mail, “outshone the power of my desire for Woody. Pathetic, but true.”

Keaton, now 65, became bulimic in 1968 at age 22, when she was cast in the Broadway musical “Hair.” Three years of binging and purging approximately 20,000 calories a day left her with irregular periods, heartburn and 26 cavities in her teeth. She writes that Allen didn’t confront her about her disease but sent her to a psychoanalyst, whom she saw every day for 18 months. At 25, she began eating normally again.

Keaton also goes into her romances with Al Pacino and Warren Beatty. But it’s Allen who remains on her mind.

“I miss Woody,” she writes. “He’d cringe if he knew how much I care about him, but I’m smart enough not to broach the subject. I know he’s borderline repulsed by the grotesque nature of my affection. What am I supposed to do? I still love him.”