Born on 5 January, 1946 in Los Angeles, California, Diane Keaton — whose birth name was actually Diane Hall (hence the Hall in Annie Hall) — didn’t actually begin her acting career on screen. Rather, having performed in singing and acting clubs at high school in California and trained at New York’s legendary Neighborhood Playhouse in young adulthood, Keaton came to the world’s attention as part of the original Broadway cast of Hair in 1968, then the Tony-nominated lead of Woody Allen’s play Play It Again, Sam the following year.
Diane Keaton’s creative relationship with Allen as it moved from stage to screen would come to bear great fruit for the vibrant young actor in years to come. But before all of that, Keaton earned her on-screen spurs with a pair of captivating turns as Kay Adams, girlfriend (and later wife) of Al Pacino’s Michael Corleone in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather and The Godfather Part II: in two male-dominated movies, it is no mean feat that Keaton’s Adams emerges as something of a low-key lynchpin — especially as Michael takes narrative centre-stage in the second film. Keaton’s emotionally charged reprisal of the role of Kay in The Godfather Part III some 16 years later remains a highlight of Sofia Coppola’s trilogy capper.
Back in the 70s then, and post-The Godfather, Keaton continued to demonstrate her acting dynamism with winning turns in a slew of Woody Allen joints — from sci-fi comedy Sleeper through Dostoevskyan satire Love And Death, sombre Oscar-nominated drama Interiors, black-and-white Big Apple rom-com Manhattan. Sandwiched in the middle of that pack, nestled between James Caan co-starrer Harry And Walter Go To New York and crime drama Looking For Mr. Goodbar (the latter of which saw Keaton nominated for a Golden Globe), is Annie Hall, the film that won Diane Keaton her Oscar and that cemented her status as a capital ‘S’ Star. In the titular role, one both written for and based on her, Keaton is at once self-deprecating and charismatic, sweet yet never sickly so, and — of course — utterly unforgettable.
A second Oscar nomination for Keaton would come four years after Annie Hall in 1981, in recognition of her magnetic performance as feminist, activist, and journalist Louise Bryant in Warren Beatty’s sprawling, epic revolutionary joint Reds. Diane Keaton’s star would continue to rise, with no sign of waning, as the multi-talented actor barrelled towards the new millennium, impressing in a slew of memorable films — from prison drama Mrs. Soffel and Bruce Beresford black comedy Crimes Of The Heart to further Woody Allen team-ups Radio Days and Manhattan Murder Mystery, via formative Nancy Myers team-up Baby Boom and perennial comfort watch Father Of The Bride. (Also, don’t sleep on Keaton, Bette Midler, and Goldie Hawn zinger-filled triple-threat comedy The First Wives Club.)
Two further Oscar nods would come for Keaton on both sides of the turn of the 21st century, first as a leukaemia sufferer trying to end a decades-long feud with her sister (Meryl Streep) in low key 1996 drama Marvin’s Room, then as the headstrong playwright who Jack Nicholson’s heart attack stricken record label boss can’t help falling for in Nancy Meyers’ classic 2003 rom-com Something’s Gotta Give. And while Keaton wouldn’t necessarily hit such dizzying heights as those again in the two decades that followed, that isn’t to say that the actor — who, lest we forget, wrote three memoirs in the last fifteen years andreceived a coveted AFI Lifetime Achievement award — lost any of her shine. Diane Keaton continued to remind us why we fell in love with her in the first place with memorable turns in The Family Stone, Morning Glory, and, most recently, silver screening favourites Book Club and Book Club: The Next Chapter.
In the hours since news broke of Diane Keaton’s passing, social media has been flooded with outpourings of love, grief, and memories of the Hollywood heavyweight. Keaton’s First Wives’ Club co-star Bette Midler took to Instagram to pay tribute to a friend who was “hilarious, a complete original, completely without guile.” In a statement shared with Deadline, Book Club co-star Mary Steenburgen said: “Diane was magic. There was no one, nor will there ever be, anyone like her. I loved her and felt blessed to be her friend. My love to her family. What a wonder she was!!!” Elsewhere, Kimberly Williams Paisley — who played Keaton’s daughter in Father Of The Bride — shared a shot from the film on Instagram, writing in the caption, “You are one of a kind, and it was thrilling to be in your orbit for a time.”
