Diane Keaton, Oscar-winning star of Annie Hall The films “The Godfather” and “Father of the Bride,” whose quirky, flamboyant style and depth made her one of the most distinguished actresses of a generation, are dead. She was 79.
People magazine reported Saturday that she died in California with loved ones by her side, citing a family spokesman. No other details were immediately available, and representatives for Keaton did not immediately respond to requests from The Associated Press.
The unexpected news shocked the whole world.
“She was funny, completely original and completely devoid of guile or any competition that you would expect from such a star. What you saw was who she was… oh la la la!,” Bette Midler wrote in an Instagram post. She and Keaton starred in the film The First Wives Club.
Keaton was the actress who helped make films iconic and timeless, from her “La-di-da, la-di-da” line as Annie Hall, dressed in a tie, bowler, vest and khakis, to her a heartbreaking turn as Kay Adams, a woman who was unlucky enough to join the Corleone family.
Her stellar performances in the 1970s, many of them in Woody Allen films, were also no flash in the pan, and she continued to captivate new generations for decades, thanks in part to her long-term collaboration with director Nancy Meyers.
She played a businessman who unexpectedly inherits a baby in “Baby Boom,” a mother of the bride in the beloved remake of “Father of the Bride,” a newly single woman in “The First Wives Club” and a divorced playwright who gets involved with Jack Nicholson's musical director in “Something's Gotta Give.”
Keaton won her first Oscar for Annie Hall and was nominated three more times: for Reds, Marvin's Room and Something's Gotta Give.
In his Keaton manner, after accepting her Oscar in 1978 she laughed and said, “That’s something.”
Hollywood's Child Breaks into New York
Keaton was born Diane Hall in January 1946 in Los Angeles, although her family was not part of the film industry in which she found herself. Her mother was a housewife and photographer, and her father was in real estate and civil engineering.
Keaton became interested in theater and singing while attending school in Santa Ana, California, and dropped out of college after a year to pursue it in Manhattan. Actors Equity already had Diane Hall in its ranks, and she took Keaton, her mother's maiden name, as her own.
She studied with Sanford Meisner in New York and credited him with giving her the freedom to “map the complex picture of human behavior under his safe guidance. It made playing with fire fun.”
Receive daily national news
Get the day's top news, political, economic and current affairs headlines delivered to your inbox once a day.
“More than anything, Sanford Meisner helped me learn to appreciate the dark side of behavior,” she wrote in her 2012 memoir, “Then Again.” “I've always had the ability to feel it, but haven't had the courage yet to delve into such dangerous, illuminating territory.”
She began performing on stage as an understudy in the Broadway production of Hair and in Allen's Play It Again, Sam in 1968, for which she received a Tony Award nomination. Yet she remained deeply self-conscious about her appearance and struggled with bulimia in her 20s.
Become a star with The Godfather and Woody Allen
Keaton made her film debut in the 1970 romantic comedy Lovers and Other Strangers, but her big break came a few years later when she was cast in Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather, which won Best Picture and became one of the most beloved films of all time. And yet, even she was hesitant to return to the sequel, although after reading the script she decided otherwise.
She summed up her role as Kay, “a role that she never had anything to do with,” although she enjoyed memories of playing opposite Al Pacino.
The 1970s were an incredibly productive time for Keaton, thanks in part to her ongoing collaborations with Allen in both comedic and dramatic roles. She appeared in the films Sleeper, Love and Death, Interiors, Manhattan, Manhattan Murder Mystery and the film version of Play It Again, Sam.
Allen and the late Marshall Brickman gave Keaton one of her most iconic roles in Annie Hall, the contagious Chippewa Falls woman whom Allen's Alvy Singer can't forget. Considered one of the greatest romantic comedies of all time, the film centers around Keaton's eccentric, self-deprecating Annie.
Critic Vincent Canby wrote in The New York Times: “As Annie Hall, Ms. Keaton plays Woody Allen's Liv Ullman. His camera finds a beauty and an emotional resource that somehow eludes other directors. Her Annie Hall is a marvelous nuthouse.”
She acknowledged the parallels between Annie Hall and real life, but downplayed them.
“My last name is Hall. At least in my opinion, Woody and I had a serious affair,” she wrote. “I really wanted to be a singer. I was unsure of myself and was looking for words.”
Keaton and Allen were also in a romantic relationship from about 1968, when she met him while auditioning for his play, until about 1974. After that they remained co-authors and friends.
“He was so fashionable, with his thick glasses and cool suits,” Keaton wrote in her memoir. “But I was drawn to his demeanor, his gestures, his hands, his cough and the self-deprecating look down when he told jokes.”
She was also romantically linked to Pacino, who played her husband in The Godfather, and Warren Beatty, who directed her and with whom she starred in Red. She never married, but adopted two children when she was over 50: daughter Dexter and son Duke.
“I decided that the only way to realize my main dream – to become a real star of a Broadway musical comedy – was to remain an adoring daughter. Loving a man, a man and becoming a wife would have to be put aside,” she wrote in her memoirs.
“The names changed: from Dave to Woody, then to Warren and finally to Al. Could I make a long-term commitment to them? It's hard to say. Subconsciously, I must have known that it would never work, and because of this, they would never stop my dreams from happening.”
When Keaton met Nancy Meyers
Not all of Keaton's roles have been successful, such as her foray into action in John Le Carré's adaptation of George Roy Hill's The Little Drummer Girl. But in 1987, she began another long-running collaboration with Nancy Meyers, which resulted in four beloved films. Reviews of the first Baby Boom film, directed by Charles Shyer, may have been mixed at the time, but Pauline Kael even described Keaton's production as “a great comedy production with a lot of silliness.”
Their next collaboration will be in the remake of Father of the Bride, which Shyer directed and co-wrote with Meyers. She and Steve Martin played the bride's worried parents, which became a big hit and spawned a sequel.
In 2003, Meyers cast her in the romantic comedy Something's Gotta Give, in which she begins a relationship with a womanizing playboy played by Jack Nicholson and is also pursued by a younger doctor played by Keanu Reeves. Her character Erica Barry, with her beautiful Hamptons home and ivory outfits, has become a key inspiration for the recent rib-bab fashion trend. It earned her one final Oscar nomination, and she would later name the film her favorite film.
She has also directed from time to time, including an episode of Twin Peaks, a Belinda Carlisle music video and the sister drama Hanging Up, which she co-wrote with Delia Ephron and starred in alongside Meg Ryan and Lisa Kudrow.
Keaton continued to work steadily throughout the 2000s, with notable roles in The Family Stone as a dying matriarch unwilling to give up her son's ring, Morning Glory as a morning news anchor, and Film “Book Club”.
She has also written several books, including the memoirs Then Again and Let's Just Say It Was Ugly, and the art and design book The House That Pinterest Built.
Keaton celebrated AFI Life Achievement Award in 2017, told the AP at the time that it was a surreal experience.
“I feel like it's the wedding I never had, or the big gathering I never had, or the retirement party I never had, or all those things I've always avoided—the big party,” she said. “This is a really big deal for me and I’m very, very grateful.”
In 2022, she “sealed” her legacy with a hand and footprint ceremony outside the TCL Chinese Theater in Los Angeles in front of her children.
“I don’t think about my film legacy,” she said at the event. “I'm just lucky that I ended up here at all, in any shape or form. I'm just lucky. I don't see myself as anything other than that.”
