It is being reported that the late Diane Keaton struggled with battling hereditary dementia in her final months.
For those unaware, the American actress passed away at the age of 79 on October 11, 2025, in Los Angeles, California. The cause of death of the Oscar winner was pneumonia.
A longtime friend of Keaton told Radar Online that she was fighting off genetically inherited dementia during her final days and it rapidly affected her that her family and close friends could not understand what was happening with her.
The grieving family deliberately chose to hide the Annie Hall star’s dementia from the public even when they revealed pneumonia as her cause of death.
“She’d been struggling quietly for some time. The people around her knew, but she didn’t want the world to,” the longtime pal shared.
Keaton went to the ultra-exclusive Palm Springs retreat Smoke Tree Ranch in her last months to hide her declining health from public and her condition worsened so extremely that she could not recognize her former mentor and lover Woody Allen when he paid her a visit along with his wife, Soon-Yi Previn.
Notably, on the set of the 2022 film Maybe I Do, the First Wives Club star would struggle to remember her lines and to ease her struggle, they were fed to her through an earpiece.
“It was heartbreaking to see. [Costar] William H. Macy was incredibly kind and supportive, but if there was a break for a meal or anything, it was like starting from scratch,” an insider from the crew of Maybe I Do shared.
