Personality profiles like this week's cover story on Actress Diane Keaton depend largely on the reporter's ability to establish a rapport with the subject -- while maintaining a professional detachment. Too often interviews are nothing more than simple question-and-answer sessions that provide the journalist with little insight into the subject. But occasionally, resonance and understanding develop between the two that add a lot to the story. Such was the case with Diane Keaton and TIME Reporter-Researcher Janice Castro.

Castro first met Keaton in Manhattan last March while reporting on Woody Allen's film Annie Hall. This time she arranged to spend a week with the actress in Los Angeles, where Keaton was relaxing before returning to the East Coast to work in another Allen film. For Castro, who lived and went to school in Berkeley, it was like going home again. Says she: "Because we both grew up in California, we had a lot in common. We were both really shy in high school; we talked about all the guys we used to dream about and the clothes we used to wear. We both had a sense of familiarity with being at home in those dry, brown hills--stopping at fast-food places and getting in the car to drive and talk." The two women spent their first day together shopping and running errands: going to supermarkets, drugstores and health-food stores, where Keaton bought two bags of special caramel corn--the kind with extra nuts. Says Castro: "Diane doesn't want to be surrounded by the trappings of stardom. She wants to be able to travel and do everyday things without being recognized." Later in the week they visited Keaton's grandmother, Grammy Hall, and toured the Hollywood hills, looking at houses that Keaton had considered buying. Castro taped more than ten hours of their conversation while gathering information for her 66-page file to Contributor John Skow, who wrote the story. But some of her best insights came when the recorder was switched off. Says Castro: "Diane is a very private person who sometimes finds it difficult to articulate her feelings. For instance, we had already touched on things like her self-consciousness, her feelings about men. But it wasn't until this jerk in a restaurant tried to pick us up that she really opened up on those subjects. Once she was able to see herself in a humorous light, she could talk about it. You learn a great deal about someone when you laugh together."

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