text: Keaton says she had an intuitive understanding of Bryant: “I saw her as the everyman of that piece, as somebody who really wanted to be extraordinary, but was probably more ordinary, except for the fact that she was driven. I knew what it was like not to really be an artist. I knew what it felt like to be extremely insecure. I knew what it was like to be envious.” But both she and Beatty emphatically reject the notion that the Reed-Bryant relationship was in some sense analogous to their own. Says Keaton, “It was completely different. I didn’t find myself dead in a stairway, drunk. Also I don’t think that we’re that important, historically, Warren and I. Sorry to say.” For his part, Beatty credits Keaton with much more self-awareness than Bryant possessed. Nor, he says emphatically, was the actress in any way in his shadow. “She had just made one of the great, great movies—Annie Hall. She had won the Academy Award. She was very much in demand.”