Diane Keaton appears at the Ralph Lauren Spring 2023 Fashion Experience in Pasadena, Calif., on Oct. 13, 2022.
Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP
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Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP
Diane Keaton, the Oscar-winning star of “Annie Hall,” “The Godfather” films and “Father of the Bride,” whose quirky, vibrant manner and depth made her one of the most singular actors of a generation, has died. She was 79.
Her death was confirmed to NPR by Dori Rath, a producer of Keaton’s films. No other details were immediately available.
The unexpected news was met with shock around the world.
“She was hilarious, a complete original, and completely without guile, or any of the competitiveness one would have expected from such a star. What you saw was who she was…oh, la, lala!,” Bette Midler said in a post on Instagram. She and Keaton co-starred in “The First Wives Club.”
Keaton was the kind of actor who helped make films iconic and timeless, from her “La-dee-da, la-dee-da” phrasing as Annie Hall, bedecked in that necktie, bowler hat, vest and khakis, to her heartbreaking turn as Kay Adams, the woman unfortunate enough to join the Corleone family.
Her star-making performances in the 1970s, many of which were in Woody Allen films, were not a flash in the pan either, and she would continue to charm new generations for decades thanks in part to a longstanding collaboration with filmmaker Nancy Meyers.
She played a businessperson who unexpectedly inherits an infant in “Baby Boom,” the 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 music executive in “Something’s Gotta Give.”
Keaton won her first Oscar for “Annie Hall” and would go on to be nominated three more times, for “Reds,” playing the journalist and suffragist Louise Bryant, “Marvin’s Room,” as a caregiver who suddenly needs care herself, and “Something’s Gotta Give,” as a middle-aged divorcee who is the object of several men’s affections.
In her very Keaton way, upon accepting her Oscar in 1978 she laughed and said, “This is something.”
A child of Hollywood breaks through in New York
Keaton was born Diane Hall in January 1946 in Los Angeles, though her family was not part of the film industry she would find herself in. Her mother was a homemaker and photographer, and her father was in real estate and civil engineering, and both would inspire her love in the arts, from fashion to architecture.
Keaton was drawn to theater and singing while in school in Santa Ana, California, and she dropped out of college after a year to make a go of it in Manhattan. Actors’ Equity already had a Diane Hall in their ranks, and she took Keaton, her mother’s maiden name, as her own.
She studied under Sanford Meisner in New York and has credited him with giving her the freedom to “chart the complex terrain of human behavior within the safety of his guidance. It made playing with fire fun.”
“More than anything, Sanford Meisner helped me learn to appreciate the darker side of behavior,” she wrote in her 2012 memoir, “Then Again.” “I always had a knack for sensing it but not yet the courage to delve into such dangerous, illuminating territory.”
She started on the stage as an understudy in the Broadway production for “Hair,” and in Allen’ s “Play It Again, Sam” in 1968, for which she would receive a Tony nomination. And yet she remained deeply self-conscious about her appearance and battled bulimia in her 20s.
Becoming 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 breakthrough would come a few years later when she was cast in Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Godfather,” which won best picture and become one of the most beloved films of all time. And yet even she hesitated to return for the sequel, though after reading the script she decided otherwise.
She summed up her role as Kay, a role she never related to even though she savored memories of acting with Al Pacino.
The 1970s were an incredibly fruitful time for Keaton thanks in part to her ongoing collaboration with Allen in both comedic and dramatic roles. She appeared in “Sleeper,” “Love and Death,” “Interiors,” Manhattan,” and the film version of “Play it Again, Sam.” The 1977 crime-drama “Looking for Mr. Goodbar” also earned her raves.
Allen and the late Marshall Brickman gave Keaton one of her most iconic roles in “Annie Hall,” the infectious woman from Chippewa Falls whom Allen’s Alvy Singer cannot get over. The film is considered one of the great romantic comedies of all time, with Keaton’s eccentric, self-deprecating Annie at its heart.
In The New York Times, critic Vincent Canby wrote, “As Annie Hall, Miss Keaton emerges as Woody Allen’s Liv Ullman. His camera finds beauty and emotional resources that somehow escape the notice of other directors. Her Annie Hall is a marvelous nut.”
She acknowledged parallels between Annie Hall and real life, while also downplaying them.
“My last name is Hall. Woody and I did share a significant romance, according to me, anyway,” she wrote. “I did want to be a singer. I was insecure, and I did grope 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. Afterward they remained collaborators and friends. She later appeared in “Radio Days,” in 1987, and “Manhattan Murder Mystery,” in 1993.
“He was so hip, with his thick glasses and cool suits,” Keaton wrote in her memoir. “But it was his manner that got me, his way of gesturing, his hands, his coughing and looking down in a self-deprecating way while he told jokes.”
She was also romantically linked to Pacino, who played her husband in “The Godfather,” and Warren Beatty who directed her and whom she co-starred with in “Reds.” She never married but did adopt two children when she was in her 50s: a daughter, Dexter, and a son, Duke.
“I figured the only way to realize my number-one dream of becoming an actual Broadway musical comedy star was to remain an adoring daughter. Loving a man, a man, and becoming a wife, would have to be put aside,” she wrote in the memoir.
“The names changed, from Dave to Woody, then Warren, and finally Al. Could I have made a lasting commitment to them? Hard to say. Subconsciously I must have known it could never work, and because of this they’d never get in the way of achieving my dreams.”
When Keaton met Nancy Meyers
Not all of Keaton’s roles were home runs, like her foray into action in George Roy Hill’s John le Carré adaptation of “Little Drummer Girl.” But in 1987 she’d begin another long-standing collaboration with Nancy Meyers, which would result in four beloved films. Reviews for that first outing, “Baby Boom,” directed by Charles Shyer, might have been mixed at the time but Pauline Kael even described Keaton’s as a “glorious comedy performance that rides over many of the inanities.”
Their next team-up would be in the remake of “Father of the Bride,” which Shyer directed and co-wrote with Meyers. She and Steve Martin played the flustered parents to the bride which would become a big hit and spawn a sequel.
In 2003, Meyers would direct her in “Something’s Gotta Give,” a romantic comedy in which she begins a relationship with a playboy womanizer, played by Jack Nicholson, while also being pursued by a younger doctor, played by Keanu Reeves. Her character Erica Barry, with her beautiful Hamptons home and ivory outfits was a key inspiration for the recent costal grandmother fashion trend. It earned her what would be her last Oscar nomination and, later, she’d call it her favorite film.
She also directed occasionally, with works including an episode of “Twin Peaks,” a Belinda Carlisle music video and the sister dramedy “Hanging Up,” which Nora Ephron and Delia Ephron co-wrote, and she starred in alongside Meg Ryan and Lisa Kudrow.
Keaton continued working steadily throughout the 2000s, with notable roles in “The Family Stone,” as a dying matriarch reluctant to give her ring to her son, in “Morning Glory,” as a morning news anchor, and the “Book Club” films.
She wrote several books as well, including memoirs “Then Again” and “Let’s Just Say It Wasn’t Pretty,” and an art and design book, “The House that Pinterest Built.”
Keaton was celebrated with an AFI Life Achievement Award in 2017, telling 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 these things that I always avoided — the big bash,” she said. “It’s really a big event for me and I’m really, deeply grateful.”
In 2022, she “cemented” her legacy with a hand and footprint ceremony outside the TCL Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles, with her children looking on.
“I don’t think about my film legacy,” she said at the event. “I’m just lucky to have been here at all in any way, shape or form. I’m just fortunate. I don’t see myself anything other than that.”
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