Wednesday, October 15, 2025

A00294 - Diane Keaton, Oscar Winning Star for "Annie Hall" and of "The Godfather Trilogy"

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Diane Keaton
Keaton in Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977)
Born
Diane Hall

January 5, 1946
Los Angeles, California, U.S
DiedOctober 11, 2025 (aged 79)
Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Education
OccupationActress
Years active1966–2024
Children2
AwardsFull list
Signature

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Diane Keaton (born January 5, 1946, Los Angeles, California, U.S.—died October 11, 2025, California) was an American film actress and director who achieved fame in quirky comic roles prior to gaining respect as a dramatic actress. Keaton won an Academy Award for her starring role in Annie Hall (1977).

Education and early career

Keaton studied acting at Santa Ana College in California and at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York. She appeared in summer stock in the mid-1960s and in 1968 understudied the lead in the Broadway rock musical Hair. She had the lead role in Woody Allen’s Broadway play Play It Again, Sam (1969), which she later reprised for the 1972 film version. Keaton made her film debut in Lovers and Other Strangers (1970); her character, a young naïf divorcing her husband because his hair no longer smells like raisins, established a comic persona that would sustain her early career.

The Godfather films and Annie Hall

Keaton’s career gained momentum after she was cast in Francis Ford Coppola’s acclaimed gangster dramas: The Godfather (1972) and The Godfather, Part II (1974). She portrayed the girlfriend, and later wife, of Michael Corleone (played by Al Pacino), the head of a crime family. (She and Pacino began an on-again, off-again relationship that continued until 1990; they broke up over Pacino’s refusal to marry.) For the rest of the 1970s, Keaton appeared mostly in Allen’s comedies, including Sleeper (1973), Love and Death (1975), Interiors (1978), and Manhattan (1979).

Empty movie theater and blank screen (theatre, motion pictures, cinema).
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Oscar-Worthy Movie Trivia
Annie Hall
Annie HallDiane Keaton and Woody Allen in Annie Hall (1977).

Keaton’s watershed year was 1977: in two films she not only established herself as a star but succeeded in both reinventing her screen persona and capitalizing on her established one. Allen’s Annie Hall—which won Academy Awards for best picture, actress, and director—is probably the role for which she is best known, appearing as the archetypal Keaton “kook.” Based on the real-life relationship between Allen and Keaton, the film chronicles Annie’s transformation from shy awkwardness to mature confidence. In many ways it was an autobiographical statement for Keaton, who made a dramatic turn the same year in Richard Brooks’s dark, violent Looking for Mr. Goodbar. She continued in that vein as journalist Louise Bryant in Warren Beatty’s Reds (1981), which earned her another Oscar nomination.

Father of the Bride and Something’s Gotta Give

Keaton found continued success in such diverse films as Shoot the Moon (1982), The Little Drummer Girl (1984), Crimes of the Heart (1986), and the popular Baby Boom (1987). She reunited with Allen for a cameo in Radio Days (1987) and a leading role in Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993). During the 1990s she appeared in several films with broad appeal, such as The Godfather, Part III (1990), the romantic farce Father of the Bride (1991), and the melodrama Marvin’s Room (1996).

Something's Gotta Give
Something's Gotta GiveDiane Keaton and Jack Nicholson in Something's Gotta Give (2003), directed by Nancy Meyers.

In the early 21st century Keaton starred in a number of lighthearted comedies, including Nancy Meyers’s Something’s Gotta Give (2003), opposite Jack Nicholson; The Family Stone (2005); Because I Said So (2007); and Morning Glory (2010), in which she and Harrison Ford portrayed TV anchors with clashing personalities. She returned to less frothy fare with the dramedy Darling Companion (2012) before starring in the multigenerational-family farce The Big Wedding (2013) and the comedies And So It Goes (2014) and Love the Coopers (2015). Keaton voiced a blue tang fish, the mother of the title character (voiced by Ellen Degeneres), in Pixar’s computer animated aquatic adventure Finding Dory (2016).

Later credits

Keaton then took on her first regular television role, playing a nun in HBO’s The Young Pope (2016). She later starred in the romantic comedies Hampstead (2017); Book Club (2018) and its sequel (2023); and Love, Weddings & Other Disasters (2020). In Poms (2019) she played a terminally ill woman who forms a cheerleading squad in her retirement community. The dramedy Mack & Rita (2022) centers on a 30-year-old social-media influencer who ages 40 years after spending time in a life-regression machine. Keaton’s final film was the comedy Summer Camp (2024).

In addition to acting, Keaton also directed several films, including Hanging Up (2000). Her memoir, Then Again, was published in 2011. She later wrote a collection of essays, Let’s Just Say It Wasn’t Pretty (2014), and also published a series of house-styling guides, including House (2012) and The House That Pinterest Built (2017).

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Diane Keaton (née Hall; January 5, 1946 – October 11, 2025) was an American actress. Her career spanned more than five decades, during which she rose to prominence in the New Hollywood movement. She collaborated frequently with Woody Allen, appearing in eight of his films. Keaton received various accolades, including an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, and two Golden Globe Awards, along with nominations for two Emmy Awards and a Tony Award. She was honored with the Film at Lincoln Center Gala Tribute in 2007 and the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2017.

Keaton's career began on stage, acting in the original Broadway production of the musical Hair (1968) and Woody Allen's comic play Play It Again, Sam (1969), the latter of which earned her a nomination for a Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play for her performance. She then made her screen debut with a small role in Lovers and Other Strangers (1970) before rising to prominence with her first major film role as Kay Adams in Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather (1972), a role she reprised in its sequels Part II (1974) and Part III (1990). She frequently collaborated with Allen beginning with the film adaptation of Play It Again, Sam (1972). Her next two films with him, Sleeper (1973) and Love and Death (1975), established her as a comic actress, while her fourth, Annie Hall (1977), won her the Academy Award for Best Actress.

Keaton was further Oscar-nominated for her roles as activist Louise Bryant in the historical epic Reds (1981), a leukemia patient in the family drama Marvin's Room (1996), and a dramatist in the romantic comedy Something's Gotta Give (2003). She was known for her roles in dramatic films such as Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977), Interiors (1978), Shoot the Moon (1982), and Crimes of the Heart (1986), as well as comedic roles in Manhattan (1979), Baby Boom (1987), Father of the Bride (1991), its 1995 sequel, Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993), The First Wives Club (1996), The Family Stone (2005), Finding Dory (2016), and Book Club (2018).

On television, she portrayed Amelia Earhart in the TNT film Amelia Earhart: The Final Flight (1994), which earned her nominations for the Primetime Emmy Award, Golden Globe Award, and Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Actress in a Limited Series or Movie. She played a nun in the HBO limited series The Young Pope (2016). Keaton was also known as a fashion icon and wrote four books, including her memoir Then Again (2011).

Early life and education

Keaton was born Diane Hall on January 5, 1946, in Los Angeles, California, to Dorothy Deanne (née Keaton; 1921–2008) and John Newton Ignatius "Jack" Hall (1922–1990). Keaton was the eldest of their four children. Dorothy was a homemaker and amateur photographer; Jack was a real estate broker and civil engineer. Through his matriline, Jack was half-Irish.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7] Keaton was raised a Free Methodist by her mother.[8][9][10] Her mother won the "Mrs. Los Angeles" pageant for homemakers; Keaton said that the theatricality of the event inspired her first impulse to become an actress and ultimately her desire to work on stage.[11] She also credited Katharine Hepburn, whom she admired for playing strong and independent women, as one of her inspirations.[12]

Keaton was a 1963 graduate of Santa Ana High School in Santa Ana, California.[13] During her time there, she participated in singing and acting clubs at school, and starred as Blanche DuBois in a school production of A Streetcar Named Desire. After graduation, she attended Santa Ana College, and later Orange Coast College as an acting student, but dropped out after a year to pursue an entertainment career in Manhattan.[14] Upon joining the Actors' Equity Association, she changed her surname to Keaton, which was her mother's maiden name, as there was already an actress registered under the name of Diane Hall.[15] For a brief time she also moonlighted at nightclubs with a singing act.[16] She revisited her nightclub act in Annie Hall (1977), And So It Goes (2014), and a cameo in Radio Days (1987).

Keaton began studying acting at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York City. She initially studied acting under the Meisner technique, an ensemble acting technique first evolved in the 1930s by Sanford Meisner, a New York stage actor/acting coach/director who had been a member of The Group Theater (1931–1940). She described her acting technique as, "[being] only as good as the person you're acting with ... As opposed to going it on my own and forging my path to create a wonderful performance without the help of anyone. I always need the help of everyone!"[16] According to fellow actor Jack Nicholson, "She approaches a script sort of like a play in that she has the entire script memorized before you start doing the movie, which I don't know any other actors doing that."[17]

Career

1968–1979: The Godfather films and stardom with Annie Hall

In 1968, Keaton became an understudy for the part of Sheila in the original Broadway production of Hair.[18] She gained some notoriety for her refusal to disrobe at the end of Act I when the cast performs nude, even though nudity in the production was optional for actors (those who performed nude received a $50 bonus).[11][19] After acting in Hair for nine months, she auditioned for a part in Woody Allen's production of Play It Again, Sam. After nearly being passed over for being too tall (at 5 ft 8 in (173 cm), she was 2 inches (5 cm) taller than Allen), she won the part.[4] She went on to receive a Tony Award nomination for a Best Featured Actress in a Play for her performance in the play.[20]

Keaton with Woody Allen and Jerry Lacy in the play Play It Again, Sam

In 1970, Keaton appeared in a deodorant commercial for Hour After Hour.[21] That same year, she made her film debut in Lovers and Other Strangers.[22] She followed with guest roles on the television series Love, American Style; Night Gallery; and Mannix.[23]

Keaton's breakthrough role came two years later when she was cast as Kay Adams, the girlfriend and eventual wife of Michael Corleone (played by Al Pacino) in Francis Ford Coppola's 1972 film The Godfather. Coppola noted that he first noticed Keaton in Lovers and Other Strangers, and cast her because of her reputation for eccentricity that he wanted her to bring to the role[24] (Keaton claimed that at the time she was commonly referred to as "the kooky actress" of the film industry).[11] Her performance in the film was loosely based on her real-life experience of making the film, both of which she described as being "the woman in a world of men."[11] The Godfather was an unparalleled critical and financial success, becoming the highest-grossing film of the year and winning the 1972 Academy Award for Best Picture.[25]

Two years later, she reprised her role as Kay Adams in The Godfather Part II. She was initially reluctant, saying, "At first, I was skeptical about playing Kay again in the Godfather sequel. But when I read the script, the character seemed much more substantial than in the first film."[14] In Part II, her character changed dramatically, becoming more embittered about her husband's criminal empire. Even though Keaton received widespread exposure from the films, some critics felt that her character's importance was minimal. Time wrote that she was "invisible in The Godfather and pallid in The Godfather Part II, but according to Empire magazine, Keaton "proves the quiet lynchpin which is no mean feat in [the] necessarily male dominated films."[26][27]

Keaton's other notable films of the 1970s included many collaborations with Woody Allen. She played many eccentric characters in several of his comic and dramatic films, including Sleeper; Love and Death; Interiors; Manhattan; Manhattan Murder Mystery and the film version of Play It Again, Sam, directed by Herbert Ross. Allen credited Keaton as his muse during his early film career.[28]

In 1976, Keaton starred Off-Broadway in the world premier of the Israel Horovitz play Primary English Class at Circle in the Square Theatre. The New York Times review noted, "Keaton gives a delightful portrait of a woman sinking slowly out of control." [29]

In 1977, Keaton won the Academy Award for Best Actress for Allen's romantic comedy-drama Annie Hall, one of her most famous roles. Annie Hall, written by Allen and Marshall Brickman and directed by Allen, was believed by many to be an autobiographical exploration of his relationship with Keaton. Allen based the character of Annie Hall loosely on Keaton ("Annie" was a nickname of hers, and "Hall" was her original surname). Many of Keaton's mannerisms and self-deprecating sense of humor were added into the role by Allen. (Director Nancy Meyers has claimed: "Diane's the most self-deprecating person alive."[30]) Keaton also said that Allen wrote the character as an "idealized version" of herself.[31] The two starred as a frequently on-again, off-again couple living in New York City. Her acting was later summed up by CNN as "awkward, self-deprecating, speaking in endearing little whirlwinds of semi-logic",[32] and by Allen as a "nervous breakdown in slow motion."[33] Annie Hall emerged as a major critical and commercial success and won the Academy Award for Best Picture. Of Keaton's performance, feminist film critic Molly Haskell wrote, "Keaton took me by surprise in Annie Hall. Here she blossomed into something more than just another kooky dame—she put the finishing touches on a type, the anti-goddess, the golden shiksa from the provinces who looks cool and together, who looks as if she must have a date on Saturday night, but has only to open her mouth or gulp or dart spastically sideways to reveal herself as the insecure bungler she is, as complete a social disaster in her own way as Allen's horny West Side intellectual is in his."[34] In 2006, Premiere magazine ranked Keaton in Annie Hall 60th on its list of the "100 Greatest Performances of All Time", and noted:

It's hard to play ditzy. ... The genius of Annie is that despite her loopy backhand, awful driving, and nervous tics, she's also a complicated, intelligent woman. Keaton brilliantly displays this dichotomy of her character, especially when she yammers away on a first date with Alvy (Woody Allen), while the subtitle reads, 'He probably thinks I'm a yoyo.' Yo-yo? Hardly.[35]

Keaton's eccentric wardrobe in Annie Hall, which consisted mainly of vintage men's clothing, including neckties, vests, baggy pants, and fedora hats, made her an unlikely fashion icon of the late 1970s. A small amount of the clothing seen in the film came from Keaton herself, who was already known for her tomboyish clothing style years before Annie Hall, and Ruth Morley designed the film's costumes.[36] Soon after the film's release, men's clothing and pantsuits became popular attire for women.[37] She was known to favor men's vintage clothing, and usually appeared in public wearing gloves and conservative attire. (A 2005 profile in the San Francisco Chronicle described her as "easy to find. Look for the only woman in sight dressed in a turtleneck. On a 90-degree afternoon in Pasadena.")[38]

Her photo by Douglas Kirkland appeared on the cover of the September 26, 1977, issue of Time magazine, with the story dubbing her "the funniest woman now working in films."[26] Later that year she departed from her usual lighthearted comic roles when she won the highly coveted lead role in the drama Looking for Mr. Goodbar, based on the novel by Judith Rossner. In the film, written and directed by Richard Brooks,[39] she played a Catholic schoolteacher for deaf children who lives a double life, spending nights frequenting singles bars and engaging in promiscuous sex. Keaton became interested in the role after seeing it as a "psychological case history."[40] The same issue of Time commended her role choice and criticized the restricted roles available for female actors in American films:

A male actor can fly a plane, fight a war, shoot a badman, pull off a sting, impersonate a big cheese in business or politics. Men are presumed to be interesting. A female can play a wife, play a whore, get pregnant, lose her baby, and, um, let's see ... Women are presumed to be dull. ... Now a determined trend spotter can point to a handful of new films whose makers think that women can bear the dramatic weight of a production alone, or virtually so. Then there is Diane Keaton in Looking for Mr. Goodbar. As Theresa Dunn, Keaton dominates this raunchy, risky, violent dramatization of Judith Rossner's 1975 novel about a schoolteacher who cruises singles bars.[26]

In addition to acting, Keaton said she "had a lifelong ambition to be a singer."[41] She had a brief, unrealized career as a recording artist in the 1970s. Her first record was an original cast recording of Hair, in 1971. In 1977 she began recording tracks for a solo album, but the finished record never materialized.[4]

Keaton met with more success in the medium of still photography. Like her character in Annie Hall, Keaton had long relished photography as a favorite hobby, an interest she picked up as a teenager from her mother. While traveling in the late 1970s, she began exploring her avocation more seriously. "Rolling Stone had asked me to take photographs for them, and I thought, 'Wait a minute, what I'm really interested in is these lobbies, and these strange ballrooms in these old hotels.' So I began shooting them", she recalled in 2003. "These places were deserted, and I could just sneak in anytime and nobody cared. It was so easy and I could do it myself. It was an adventure for me." Reservations, her collection of photos of hotel interiors, was published in book form in 1980.[42]

1980–1989: Established actress and continued acclaim

With Manhattan (1979), Keaton and Allen ended their long working relationship; it was their last major collaboration until 1993. Then, in 1978, she became romantically involved with Warren Beatty and he cast her opposite him in the epic historical drama Reds.[43] In the film, she played Louise Bryant, a journalist and feminist, who flees her husband to work with radical journalist John Reed (Beatty) and later enters Russia to find him as he chronicles the Russian Civil War.[44] Beatty began developing Reds in the 1960s, with historical research and interviews underway by the early 1970s. Following years of development, filming began in 1979.[45]

Keaton (right) at the White House with First Lady Nancy Reagan and Warren Beatty (December 1981)

In a 2006 Vanity Fair story, Keaton described her role as "the everyman of that piece, as someone who wanted to be extraordinary but was probably more ordinary ... I knew what it felt like to be extremely insecure." Assistant director Simon Relph later stated that Louise Bryant was one of Keaton's most difficult roles, and that "[she] almost got broken."[46] Reds opened to widespread critical acclaim, and Keaton's performance was highly praised in particular. The New York Times wrote that Keaton was "nothing less than splendid as Louise Bryant – beautiful, selfish, funny and driven. It's the best work she has done to date."[47] Roger Ebert called Keaton "a particular surprise. I had somehow gotten into the habit of expecting her to be a touchy New Yorker, sweet, scared, and intellectual. Here, she is just what she needs to be: plucky, healthy, exasperated, loyal, and funny."[48] Keaton received her second Academy Award for Best Actress nomination for her performance.[49]

The following year, Keaton starred in the domestic drama Shoot the Moon opposite Albert Finney. The film follows George (Finney) and Faith Dunlap (Keaton), whose deteriorating marriage, separation, and love affairs devastate their four children. Shoot the Moon received mostly positive reviews from critics and Keaton's performance was again praised. In The New Yorker, Pauline Kael wrote that the film was "perhaps the most revealing American movie of the era", and that Keaton "may be a star without vanity: she's so completely challenged by the role of Faith that all she cares about is getting the character right. Very few young American movie actresses have the strength and the instinct for the toughest dramatic roles—intelligent, sophisticated heroines. Jane Fonda did, around the time that she appeared in Klute and They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, but that was more than ten years ago. There hasn't been anybody else until now. Diane Keaton acts on a different plane from that of her previous film roles; she brings the character a full measure of dread and awareness and does it in a special, intuitive way that's right for screen acting."[50] David Denby of New York magazine called Keaton "perfectly relaxed and self-assured", adding, "Keaton has always found it easy enough to bring out the anger that lies beneath the soft hesitancy of her surface manner, but she's never dug down and found this much pain before.[51] Keaton's performance garnered her a second Golden Globe nomination in a row for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama, following Reds.[52]

1984 brought The Little Drummer Girl, Keaton's first excursion into the thriller and action genre. The Little Drummer Girl was both a financial and critical failure, with critics claiming that Keaton was miscast for the genre, such as one review from The New Republic claiming that "the title role, the pivotal role, is played by Diane Keaton, and around her the picture collapses in tatters. She is so feeble, so inappropriate."[53] But the same year, she received positive reviews for her performance in Mrs. Soffel, a film based on the true story of a repressed prison warden's wife who falls in love with a convicted murderer and arranges for his escape. Two years later, she starred with Jessica Lange and Sissy Spacek in Crimes of the Heart, adapted from Beth Henley's Pulitzer Prize-winning play into a moderately successful screen comedy. Keaton's performance was well received by critics, and Rita Kempley of The Washington Post wrote, "As the frumpy Lenny, Keaton eases smoothly from New York neurotic to southern eccentric, a reluctant wallflower stymied by, of all things, her shriveled ovary."[54]

In 1987, Keaton starred in Baby Boom, her first of four collaborations with writer-producer Nancy Meyers. She played a Manhattan career woman who is suddenly forced to care for a toddler. A modest box-office success, Keaton's performance was singled out by Kael, who described it as "a glorious comedy performance that rides over many of the inanities in this picture. Keaton is smashing: the Tiger Lady's having all this drive is played for farce and Keaton keeps you alert to every shade of pride and panic the character feels. She's an ultra-feminine executive, a wide-eyed charmer, with a breathless ditziness that may remind you of Jean Arthur in The More The Merrier."[55] That same year, Keaton made a cameo in Allen's film Radio Days as a nightclub singer. 1988's The Good Mother was a financial disappointment (according to Keaton, the film was "a Big Failure. Like, BIG failure"),[56] and some critics panned her performance; according to The Washington Post, "her acting degenerates into hype—as if she's trying to sell an idea she can't fully believe in."[57]

In 1987, Keaton directed and edited her first feature film, Heaven, a documentary about the possibility of an afterlife. It met with mixed critical reaction, with The New York Times likening it to "a conceit imposed on its subjects."[58] Over the next four years, Keaton directed music videos for artists such as Belinda Carlisle, including the video for Carlisle's chart-topping hit "Heaven Is a Place on Earth,"[59] two television films starring Patricia Arquette, and episodes of the series China Beach and Twin Peaks.[60]

1990–1999: Mature roles and reunion with Woody Allen

By the 1990s, Keaton had established herself as one of the most popular and versatile actors in Hollywood. She shifted to more mature roles, frequently playing matriarchs of middle-class families. Of her role choices and avoidance of becoming typecast, she said: "Most often a particular role does you some good and Bang! You have loads of offers, all of them for similar roles ... I have tried to break away from the usual roles and have tried my hand at several things."[61]

Keaton began the decade with The Lemon Sisters, a poorly-received comedy-drama that she starred in and produced, which was shelved for a year after its completion.[62] In 1991 she starred with Steve Martin in the family comedy Father of the Bride. She was almost not cast in the film, as The Good Mother's commercial failure had strained her relationship with Walt Disney Pictures, the studio of both films.[56] Father of the Bride was Keaton's first major hit after four years of commercial disappointments. She reprised her role four years later in the sequel, as a woman who becomes pregnant in middle age at the same time as her daughter. A San Francisco Examiner review of the film was one of many in which Keaton was once again compared to Katharine Hepburn: "No longer relying on that stuttering uncertainty that seeped into all her characterizations of the 1970s, she has somehow become Katharine Hepburn with a deep maternal instinct, that is, she is a fine and intelligent actress who doesn't need to be tough and edgy in order to prove her feminism."[63]

Keaton reprised her role of Kay Adams in 1990's The Godfather Part III, set 20 years after the end of The Godfather, Part II. In 1993 Keaton starred in the black comedy mystery Manhattan Murder Mystery, her first major film role in an Allen film since 1979. Her part was originally intended for Mia Farrow, but Farrow dropped out of the project after breaking up with Allen.[64] Todd McCarthy of Variety commended her performance, writing that she "nicely handles her sometimes buffoonish central comedic role".[65] David Ansen of Newsweek wrote, "On screen, Keaton and Allen have always been made for each other: they still strike wonderfully ditsy sparks".[66] For her performance, Keaton was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Comedy or Musical.[67]

In 1995, Keaton directed Unstrung Heroes, her first theatrically released narrative film. The film, adapted from Franz Lidz's memoir, starred Nathan Watt as a boy in the 1960s whose mother (Andie MacDowell) is diagnosed with cancer. As her sickness advances and his inventor father (John Turturro) grows increasingly distant, the boy is sent to live with his two eccentric uncles (Maury Chaykin and Michael Richards). Keaton switched the story's setting from the New York of Lidz's book to the Southern California of her own childhood, and the four mad uncles were reduced to a whimsical odd couple.[68] In an essay for The New York Times, Lidz said that the cinematic Selma had died not of cancer, but of "Old Movie Disease". "Someday somebody may find a cure for cancer, but the terminal sappiness of cancer movies is probably beyond remedy."[69] Unstrung Heroes played in a relatively limited release and made little impression at the box office, but the film and its direction were generally well-received critically.[70]

Keaton's most successful film of the decade was the 1996 comedy The First Wives Club. She starred with Goldie Hawn and Bette Midler as a trio of "first wives": middle-aged women who had been divorced by their husbands in favor of younger women. Keaton claimed that making the film "saved [her] life."[71] The film was a major success, grossing US$105 million at the North American box office,[72] and it developed a cult following among middle-aged women.[73] Its reviews were generally positive for Keaton and her co-stars, and the San Francisco Chronicle called her "probably [one of] the best comic film actresses alive."[74] In 1997 Keaton, Hawn, and Midler received the Women in Film Crystal Award, which honors "outstanding women who, through their endurance and the excellence of their work, have helped to expand the role of women within the entertainment industry."[75]

Also in 1996, Keaton starred as Bessie, a woman with leukemia, in Marvin's Room, an adaptation of the play by Scott McPherson. Meryl Streep played her estranged sister, Lee, and had also initially been considered for the role of Bessie. The film also starred Leonardo DiCaprio as Lee's rebellious son. Roger Ebert wrote, "Streep and Keaton, in their different styles, find ways to make Lee and Bessie into much more than the expression of their problems."[76] Keaton earned a third Academy Award nomination for the film, which was critically acclaimed. She said the role's biggest challenge was understanding the mentality of a person with a terminal illness.[11] Keaton next starred in The Only Thrill (1997) opposite her Baby Boom co-star Sam Shephard,[77] and had a supporting role in The Other Sister (1999).[78]

In 1999, Keaton narrated the one-hour public radio documentary "If I Get Out Alive", the first to focus on the conditions and brutality young people face in the adult correctional system. The program, produced by Lichtenstein Creative Media, aired on public radio stations across the country and was honored with a First Place National Headliner Award and a Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism.[79]

2000–2009: Comedic films and resurgence

Keaton's first film of 2000 was Hanging Up, with Meg Ryan and Lisa Kudrow. She directed the film, despite claiming in a 1996 interview that she would never direct herself in a film, saying "as a director, you automatically have different goals. I can't think about directing when I'm acting."[56] A drama about three sisters coping with the senility and eventual death of their elderly father (Walter Matthau), Hanging Up rated poorly with critics and grossed a modest US$36 million at the North American box office.[80]

In 2001, Keaton co-starred with Beatty in Town & Country, a critical and financial fiasco. Budgeted at an estimated US$90 million, the film opened to little notice and grossed only US$7 million in its North American theatrical run.[81] Peter Travers of Rolling Stone wrote that Town & Country was "less deserving of a review than it is an obituary....The corpse took with it the reputations of its starry cast, including Beatty and Keaton."[82] In 2001 and 2002, Keaton starred in four low-budget television films. She played a fanatical nun in the religious drama Sister Mary Explains It All,[83] an impoverished mother in the drama On Thin Ice,[84] and a bookkeeper in the mob comedy Plan B.[85] In Crossed Over, she played Beverly Lowry, a woman who forms an unusual friendship with the only woman executed while on death row in Texas, Karla Faye Tucker.[86]

Keaton in 2009

Keaton's first major hit since 1996 came with the 2003 romantic comedy Something’s Gotta Give, directed by Nancy Meyers and co-starring Jack Nicholson. According to Meyers, studios initially passed on the project, with the director recalling that "no one wanted to see people of a certain age be sexy."[87] Keaton told Ladies' Home Journal, "Let's face it, people my age and Jack's age are much deeper, much more soulful, because they've seen a lot of life. They have a great deal of passion and hope—why shouldn't they fall in love? Why shouldn't movies show that?"[88] Keaton played a middle-aged playwright who falls in love with her daughter's much older boyfriend. The film was a major success at the box office, grossing US$125 million in North America.[89] Roger Ebert wrote, "Keaton and Nicholson bring so much experience, knowledge and humor to their characters that the film works in ways the screenplay might not have even hoped for."[90] Keaton received her fourth Academy Award nomination for her performance.[91]

Keaton's only film between 2004 and 2006 was the comedy The Family Stone (2005), starring an ensemble cast. In the film, scripted and directed by Thomas Bezucha, Keaton played a breast cancer survivor and matriarch of a big New England family that reunites at the parents' home for its annual Christmas holidays.[92] The film released to moderate critical and commercial success,[93] and earned US$92.2 million worldwide.[94] Keaton received her second Satellite Award nomination for her performance,[95] of which Peter Travers of Rolling Stone wrote, "Keaton, a sorceress at blending humor and heartbreak, honors the film with a grace that makes it stick in the memory."[96]

In 2007, Keaton starred in both Because I Said So and Mama's Boy. In the romantic comedy Because I Said So, directed by Michael Lehmann, Keaton played a long-divorced mother of three daughters, determined to pair off her only single daughter, Milly (Mandy Moore).[97] Also starring Stephen Collins and Gabriel Macht, the project opened to overwhelmingly negative reviews, with Wesley Morris of The Boston Globe calling it "a sloppily made bowl of reheated chick-flick cliches", and was ranked among the worst-reviewed films of the year.[98][99][100] The following year Keaton received her first and only Golden Raspberry Award nomination to date for the film.[95][unreliable source?] In Mama's Boy, director Tim Hamilton's feature film debut, Keaton starred as the mother of a self-absorbed 29-year-old (Jon Heder) whose world turns upside down when she starts dating and considers kicking him out of the house. Distributed for a limited release to certain parts of the United States only, the independent comedy garnered largely negative reviews.[101]

In 2008, Keaton starred alongside Dax Shepard and Liv Tyler in Vince Di Meglio's dramedy Smother, playing the overbearing mother of an unemployed therapist, who decides to move in with him and his girlfriend after breaking up with her husband (Ken Howard). As with Mama's Boy, the film received a limited release only, resulting in a gross of US$1.8 million worldwide.[102] Critical reaction to the film was generally unfavorable.[103] Also in 2008, Keaton appeared alongside Katie Holmes and Queen Latifah in the crime-comedy film Mad Money, directed by Callie Khouri. Based on the British television drama Hot Money (2001), the film revolves around three female employees of the Federal Reserve who scheme to steal money that is about to be destroyed.[104]

2010–2024: Continued comedy roles and voice work

In 2010, Keaton starred alongside Rachel McAdams and Harrison Ford in Roger Michell's comedy Morning Glory, playing the veteran TV host of a fictional morning talk show that desperately needs to boost its lagging ratings. Portraying a narcissistic character who will do anything to please the audience, Keaton described her role as "the kind of woman you love to hate."[105] Inspired by Neil Simon's 1972 Broadway play The Sunshine Boys,[106] the film was a moderate success at the box office, taking a worldwide total of almost US$59 million.[107] Keaton was generally praised for her performance, with James Berardinelli of ReelViews writing, "Keaton is so good at her part that one can see her sliding effortlessly into an anchor's chair on a real morning show."[108]

Keaton at the 2012 Santa Barbara International Film Festival

In fall 2010, Keaton joined the production of the comedy-drama Darling Companion by Lawrence Kasdan, which was released in 2012. Co-starring Kevin Kline and Dianne Wiest and set in Telluride, Colorado,[109] the film follows a woman, played by Keaton, whose husband loses her much-beloved dog at a wedding held at their vacation home in the Rocky Mountains, resulting in a search party to find the pet.[110] Kasdan's first film in nine years, the film bombed at the U.S. box office, where it scored about US$790,000 throughout its entire theatrical run.[111] Critics dismissed the film as "an overwritten, underplotted vanity project" but applauded Keaton's performance.[112][113] Ty Burr of The Boston Globe wrote that the film "would be instantly forgettable if not for Keaton, who imbues [her role] with a sorrow, warmth, wisdom, and rage that feel earned [...] Her performance here is an extension of worn, resilient grace."[113]

Also in 2011, Keaton began production on Justin Zackham's 2013 ensemble family comedy The Big Wedding, a remake of the 2006 French film Mon frère se marie in which she, along with Robert De Niro, played a long-divorced couple who, for the sake of their adopted son's wedding and his very religious biological mother, pretend they are still married.[114] The film received largely negative reviews.[115]

In 2014, Keaton starred in And So It Goes and 5 Flights Up. In Rob Reiner's romantic dramedy And So It Goes, Keaton portrayed a widowed lounge singer who finds autumnal love with a bad boy (Michael Douglas).[116] The film received largely negative reviews. One critic wrote that "And So It Goes aims for comedy, but with two talented actors stuck in a half-hearted effort from a once-mighty filmmaker, it ends in unintentional tragedy."[117] Keaton co-starred with Morgan Freeman in Richard Loncraine's comedy-drama 5 Flights Up, based on Jill Ciment's novel Heroic Measures. They play a long-married couple who have an eventful weekend after they are forced to contemplate selling their beloved Brooklyn apartment.[118][119] Shot in New York, the film premiered, under its former name Ruth & Alex, at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival.[120] The same year Keaton became the first woman to receive the Golden Lion Award at the Zurich Film Festival.[121][122]

Keaton's only film of 2015 was Love the Coopers, an ensemble comedy about a troubled family getting together for Christmas, for which she reunited with Because I Said So writer Jessie Nelson.[123] Also starring John Goodman, Ed Helms, and Marisa Tomei, Keaton was attached for several years before the film went into production.[123] Her casting was instrumental in financing and recruiting most of the other actors, which led her to an executive producer credit in the film.[123] Love the Coopers received largely negative reviews from critics, who called it a "bittersweet blend of holiday cheer",[124] and became a moderate commercial success at a worldwide total of US$41.1 million against a budget of US$17 million.[125] Also in 2015 Netflix announced the comedy Divanation, for which Keaton was expected to reunite with her First Wives Club co-stars Midler and Hawn to portray a former singing group, but the project failed to materialize.[126]

Keaton voiced amnesiac fish Dory's mother in Disney and Pixar's Finding Dory (2016), the sequel to the 2003 Pixar animated film Finding Nemo. The film was a critical and commercial success, grossing over US$1 billion worldwide, the second Pixar film to cross this mark after Toy Story 3 (2010). It also set numerous records, including the biggest animated opening of all time in North America, emerging as the biggest animated film of all time in the United States.[127][128] Keaton's other project of 2016 was the HBO eight-part series The Young Pope, in which she plays a nun who raised the newly elected Pope (Jude Law) and helped him reach the papacy.[129] The miniseries received two nominations for the 69th Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards, becoming the first Italian TV series to be nominated for Primetime Emmy Awards.[130]

In 2017, Keaton appeared opposite Brendan Gleeson in the British dramedy film Hampstead.[131] Based on the life of Harry Hallowes, it depicts an American widow (Keaton) who helps a local man defending his ramshackle hut and the life he has been leading on Hampstead Heath for 17 years.[132] The specialty release had a mixed reception from critics, who were unimpressed by the film's "deeply mediocre story",[133] but became a minor commercial success.[134] Keaton's only project of 2018 was Book Club, in which she, Jane Fonda, Candice Bergen, and Mary Steenburgen play four friends who read Fifty Shades of Grey as part of their monthly book club and subsequently begin to change how they view their personal relationships. The romantic comedy received mixed reviews from critics, who felt that Book Club only "intermittently rises to the level of its impressive veteran cast,"[135][136] but with a worldwide gross of over $100 million, became Keaton's biggest commercial success in a non-voice role since 2003's Something's Gotta Give.[137] In 2019, Keaton starred in the comedy Poms as a woman dying of cancer who starts a cheerleading squad with other female residents of a retirement home. The film was a box office disappointment and was negatively received by critics.[138] Keaton's final appearance was in the 2024 film Summer Camp.[139]

Personal life

Relationships and family

Keaton had romantic associations with several high-profile entertainment-industry personalities, starting with Woody Allen when she played a role in the 1969 Broadway production of Play It Again, Sam, which he had written. Their relationship turned romantic following a dinner after a late-night rehearsal. Her sense of humor particularly attracted him.[140] They briefly lived together during the production, but by the time the film came out, in 1972, their living arrangement had become more informal.[141] They worked together on eight films between 1971 and 1993, and Keaton said that Allen remained one of her closest friends.[31]

Keaton also had a relationship with her Godfather Trilogy co-star Al Pacino. Their on-again, off-again relationship ended after the filming of The Godfather Part III. Keaton said of Pacino, "Al was simply the most entertaining man ... To me, that's, that is the most beautiful face. I think Warren [Beatty] was gorgeous, very pretty, but Al's face is like whoa. Killer, killer face."[142]

Keaton was already dating Warren Beatty in 1979 when they co-starred in the film Reds (1981).[143] Beatty was a regular subject of tabloid and other media coverage, and Keaton became included, much to her bewilderment. In 1985, Vanity Fair called her "the most reclusive star since Garbo".[15] This relationship ended shortly after Reds wrapped. Troubles with the production are thought to have strained the relationship, including numerous financial and scheduling problems.[46] Keaton remained friends with Beatty.[31]

In her 50s, she adopted two children — a daughter in 1996 and a son in 2001.[144][145] She later stated: "Motherhood has completely changed me. It's just about the most completely humbling experience I've ever had."[146]

Religious beliefs

Keaton said she produced her 1987 documentary Heaven because "I was always pretty religious as a kid ... I was primarily interested in religion because I wanted to go to heaven." When she grew up, Keaton became agnostic.[147]

Other activities

Keaton was a vegetarian from around 1995 on.[148][149] She continued to pursue photography. In 1987, she told Vanity Fair, "I have amassed a huge library of images—kissing scenes from movies, pictures I like. Visual things are really key for me."[147] She published several collections of her photographs and served as an editor of collections of vintage photography. Works she edited include a book of photographs by paparazzo Ron Galella, an anthology of reproductions of clown paintings, and a collection of photos of California's Spanish-Colonial-style houses.[150]

Keaton served as a producer on films and television series. She produced the Fox series Pasadena, which was canceled after airing only four episodes in 2001 but completed its run on cable in 2005.[151] In 2003, she produced the Gus Van Sant drama Elephant, about a school shooting. Of why she produced the film, she said, "It really makes me think about my responsibilities as an adult to try and understand what's going on with young people."[152]

From 2005, Keaton was a contributing blogger at The Huffington Post. From 2006, she was the face of L'Oréal.[153] In 2007, she received the Film Society of Lincoln Center's Gala Tribute.[154] She opposed plastic surgery. She told More magazine in 2004, "I'm stuck in this idea that I need to be authentic ... My face needs to look the way I feel."[12]

Keaton was active in campaigns with the Los Angeles Conservancy to save and restore historic buildings, particularly in the Los Angeles area.[16] Among the buildings she was active in restoring is the Ennis House in the Hollywood Hills, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.[38] Keaton was also active in the failed campaign to save the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles (a hotel featured in Reservations), where Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated.[155] She was an enthusiast of Spanish Colonial Revival architecture.[156]

Keaton was also a real estate developer. She resold several mansions in Southern California after renovating and redesigning them. One of her clients was Madonna, who purchased a $6.5 million Beverly Hills mansion from Keaton in 2003.[157]

Keaton wrote her first memoir, Then Again, for Random House in November 2011.[158] Much of it relied on her mother's private journals, which included the line "Diane...is a mystery...At times, she's so basic, at others so wise, it frightens me."[159] In 2012, Keaton's audiobook recording of Joan Didion's Slouching Towards Bethlehem was released on Audible.com.[160] Her performance was nominated for a 2013 Audie Award in the Short Stories/Collections category.[161]

Death and tributes

Keaton died in Los Angeles, California,[139] on October 11, 2025, at the age of 79.[162][163][164] Her health had declined significantly in the preceding months, though she remained private about her condition.[165]

Numerous figures from the film and entertainment industry paid tribute to Keaton, including Coppola, Viola Davis, Robert De Niro, DiCaprio, Martin, Fonda, Hawn, Kate Hudson, Midler, Moore, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Reese Witherspoon.[166][167][168] Allen wrote and published an article, remembering Keaton, via The Free Press; through his writing, he described her as "unlike anyone the planet has experienced or is unlikely to ever see again".[169]

Acting style and legacy

Keaton in 2012

Keaton was called "one of the great American actresses from the heyday of the 1970s", a style icon and a "treasure" with a personal and professional style that is "difficult to explicate and impossible to duplicate."[170][171][172] Many critics have pointed to her versatility in starring in both light comedies and acclaimed dramas. The New York Times described Keaton as "remarkably skilled" at portraying Woody Allen's "darling flustered muse" in his comedies, as well as "shy, self-conscious women overcome by the power of their own awakened eroticism" in dramatic films like Looking for Mr. Goodbar, Reds, Shoot the Moon and Mrs. Soffel.[173] It also noted Keaton's ability to consistently reinvent and challenge herself on screen, having transitioned from "Allen's ditzy foil" to a "gifted and erotically nuanced character actress" and later "an appealing maternal figure ... a woman's woman with a sexy edge."[173][174]

Literary critic Daphne Merkin argued that Keaton remained more popular with audiences than her contemporaries because of her "friendly accessibility" and "charmingly self-effacing" persona, calling Keaton's most "steadfastly glamorous" asset her "megawatt personality, bursting out of her like an uncontrollable force of nature, a geyser of quirkily entertaining traits that fall on the air and lend everything around her a momentary sparkle."[173] In New York magazine, Peter Rainer wrote, "In her Annie Hall days, [Keaton] was famed for her thrown-together fashion sense, and her approach to acting is, in the best way, thrown-together, too. Audiences love her because they identify with the women she plays, who are never all of a piece. Nobody can be grave and goofy all at once like Diane Keaton. In these fractious times, it's the perfect combo for a modern heroine."[175] Famously self-deprecating, Keaton was noted for her "wry sense of humor" and "eccentric gender-bending style".[176]

Analyzing her on-screen persona, Deborah C. Mitchell wrote that Keaton often played "a complex, modern American woman, a paradox of self-doubt and assurance", which became her trademark. Mitchell suggests that Keaton made Annie Hall a "critical juncture for women in American culture. In this ism-infected age, Keaton became not just a star but an icon. Annie Hall, and with her Diane Keaton, presented all of the uncertainty and ambivalence of the new breed of women."[177] Likewise, Bruce Weber felt Keaton's eccentricity — "an amalgam of caginess and insecurity" and a "note of comic desperation... her round-cheeked Annie Hall dewiness"—was her gift as a screen comedian.[172] Keaton's Annie Hall is often cited among the greatest Oscar-winning performances in history: Entertainment Weekly ranked it 7th on its "25 greatest Best Actress Winners" list, praising her "loopy mannerisms, jazz-club serenades, and endlessly imitated fashion sense."[178] After seeing her performance in Looking for Mr. Goodbar, Andrew Sarris remarked, "Keaton is clearly the most dynamic woman star in pictures. And any actress who can bring wit and humor to sex in an American movie has to be blessed with the most winning magic."[179]

When asked what made Keaton funny, Allen said: "My opinion is that with the exception of Judy Holliday, she's the finest screen comedienne we've ever seen. It's in her intonation; you can't quantify it easily. When Groucho Marx or W. C. Fields or Holliday would say something, it's in the ring of their voices, and she has that. It's never line comedy with her. It's all character comedy."[172] Charles Shyer, who directed her in Baby Boom, said Keaton was "in the mold of the iconic comedic actresses Carole Lombard, Irene Dunne and Rosalind Russell."[180] In 2017, Keaton was chosen by the board of directors of the American Film Institute to receive the AFI Life Achievement Award, which Woody Allen presented to her.[181]

Acting and directing credits

Film

YearTitleRoleNotesRef
1970Lovers and Other StrangersJoan VecchioFilm debut[22]
1971Men of Crisis: The Harvey Wallinger StoryRenata WallingerMockumentary short film[182]
1972The GodfatherKay Adams-Corleone[22]
Play It Again, SamLinda Christie[22]
1973SleeperLuna Schlosser[22]
1974The Godfather Part IIKay Adams-Corleone[22]
1975Love and DeathSonja[22]
1976I Will, I Will... for NowKatie Bingham[22]
Harry and Walter Go to New YorkLissa Chestnut[22]
1977Annie HallAnnie Hall[22]
Looking for Mr. GoodbarTheresa Dunn[22]
1978InteriorsRenata[22]
1979ManhattanMary Wilkie[22]
1981The Wizard of Malta [fr]Narrator[verification needed][183]
RedsLouise Bryant[22]
1982What Does Dorrie Want?—Short film; director only[184]
Shoot the MoonFaith Dunlap[22]
1984The Little Drummer GirlCharlie[22]
Mrs. SoffelKate Soffel[22]
1986Crimes of the HeartLenny Magrath[22]
1987Radio DaysNew Years SingerCameo[22]
Baby BoomJ.C. Wiatt[22]
HeavenInterviewerDocumentary; also director and writer[185]
1988The Good MotherAnna Dunlap[22]
1990The Lemon SistersEloise HamerAlso co-producer[22]
The Godfather Part IIIKay Adams-Michelson[22]
1991Father of the BrideNina Banks[22]
1993Manhattan Murder MysteryCarol Lipton[22]
Look Who's Talking Now!DaphneVoice[22]
1995Unstrung Heroes—Director only[22]
Father of the Bride Part IINina Banks[22]
1996The First Wives ClubAnnie Paradis[22]
Marvin's RoomBessie Wakefield[22]
1997The Only ThrillCarol Fitzsimmons[22]
1999The Other SisterElizabeth Tate[22]
2000Hanging UpGeorgia MozellAlso director[22]
2001Town & CountryEllie Stoddard[22]
2002Plan BFran Varecchio[22]
2003Elephant—Executive producer only[186]
Something's Gotta GiveErica Barry[22]
2005The Family StoneSybil Stone[22]
2007Because I Said SoDaphne Wilder[22]
Mama's BoyJan Mannus[22]
2008Mad MoneyBridget Cardigan[22]
SmotherMarilyn Cooper[22]
2010Morning GloryColleen Peck[22]
2012Darling CompanionBeth Winter[22]
2013The Big WeddingEllie Griffin[22]
2014And So it GoesLeah[22]
5 Flights UpRuth Carver[22]
2015Love the CoopersCharlotte Cooper[22]
2016Finding DoryJennyVoice[186]
2017HampsteadEmily Walters[186]
2018Book ClubDiane[186]
2019PomsMartha[186]
2020Father of the Bride, Part 3(ish)Nina BanksYouTube and Facebook short film[187]
Love, Weddings & Other DisastersSara[186]
2022Mack & RitaRita[186]
2023Maybe I DoGrace[186]
Book Club: The Next ChapterDiane[186]
2024Arthur's WhiskyLinda[188]
Summer CampNora[186]

Television

YearTitleRoleNotesRef
1970Love, American StyleLouiseSegment: "Love and Pen Pals"[189]
Night GalleryNurse Frances NevinsSegment: "Room with a View"[190]
1971The F.B.I.Diane BrittEpisode: "Death Watch"[189]
MannixCindy ConradEpisode: "The Color of Murder"[190]
1977The Godfather SagaKay Adams Corleone4 episodes[191]
1991Wildflower—Television film; director only[186]
Twin Peaks—Director only; Episode: "Slaves and Masters"[139]
1992Running MatesAggie SnowTelevision film[186]
1994Amelia Earhart: The Final FlightAmelia Earhart[186]
1997Northern LightsRoberta Blumstein[186]
2001Sister Mary Explains It AllSister Mary Ignatius[186]
2002Crossed OverBeverly Lowry[186]
2003On Thin IcePatsy McCartle[186]
2006Surrender, DorothyNatalie Swerdlow[186]
2011TildaTilda WatskiPilot, not aired[192]
2016The Young PopeSister Mary Ignatius10 episodes[193]
2017AFI Life Achievement Award: A Tribute to Diane KeatonHerselfTelevision Special[194]
2019–2022Green Eggs and HamMichellee Weebie-Am-IVoice; 20 episodes[195]

Theater

YearTitleRoleVenueRef
1968HairVarious / PerformerBiltmore Theatre, Broadway[196]
1969Play It Again, SamLinda ChristieBroadhurst Theatre, Broadway[197]
1976Primary English ClassDebbie WastbaCircle in the Square Theatre, Off-Broadway[198]

Music videos

YearTitleRoleArtistRef
2021"Ghost"SelfJustin Bieber[199]

Awards and honors

Main article: List of awards and nominations received by Diane Keaton

Keaton received various awards, including an Academy Award, and a Golden Globe Award for her performance in Woody Allen's Annie Hall (1977).[200][201] She also received three more Academy Award nominations, for Reds (1981),[202] Marvin's Room (1996),[203] and Something's Gotta Give (2003).[91] Keaton received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Amelia Earhart: The Final Flight (1994)[204] and a Daytime Emmy Award nomination for CBS Schoolbreak Special in 1990. Keaton received 9 Golden Globe Award nominations, winning for Annie Hall (1977) and Something's Gotta Give (2003).[205] She also received four Screen Actors Guild Award nominations for her work in film and television.[206][207][208]

Over the years Keaton received various honors for her work as an actress and fashion icon. In 1991, she received the Hasty Pudding Woman of the Year award from Harvard's Hasty Pudding Theatricals, which is given to performers who give a lasting and impressive contribution to the world of entertainment.[209] In 1995, she was honored by the New York Women in Film & Television association along with Angela Bassett, Cokie Roberts, Gena Rowlands and Thelma Schoonmaker.[210] In 1996 she won the Golden Apple Award as the Female Star of the Year, sharing it with her First Wives Club co-stars Goldie Hawn and Bette Midler.[211] She also received the 1997 Crystal Award at the Women in Film Crystal + Lucy Awards in 1997, and the Elle Women in Hollywood Awards the Icon Award in 1998 along with Sigourney Weaver, Lucy Fisher and Gillian Armstrong.[212]

Keaton won the 2004 AFI Star Award during the US Comedy Arts Festival.[213] In 2005, she received a Lifetime Achievement award from the Hollywood Film Awards.[214] She was honored with the Film Society of Lincoln Center Gala Tribute in 2007.[215] In 2014 she received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Manaki Brothers Film Festival.[216] That year she also received the Golden Icon Award at the Zurich Film Festival.[217] In 2017 she was honored by the American Film Institute and was given a Lifetime Achievement Award, which was presented to her by her close friend and frequent collaborator Woody Allen. Others who paid tribute to her included Steve Martin, Martin Short, Meryl Streep, Reese Witherspoon, Emma Stone, Rachel McAdams, Morgan Freeman, and Al Pacino.[218] In 2018 she received a Special David at the David di Donatello Awards.[219]

Books written

As writer

As editor

See also

References

  1.  French, Philip (November 20, 2011). "Then Again: A Memoir by Diane Keaton – review". The Guardian. Retrieved October 7, 2015.
  2.  "UPI Almanac for Saturday, Jan. 5, 2019". United Press International. January 5, 2019. Archived from the original on January 5, 2019. Retrieved September 6, 2019. actor Diane Keaton in 1946 (age 73)
  3.  "Dorothy Hall, mother of Diane Keaton, dies at 86". Orange County Register. October 31, 2008. Retrieved October 11, 2025.
  4.  Fong-Torres, Ben (June 30, 1977). "Diane Keaton: The Next Hepburn". Rolling Stone. No. 242.
  5.  Brockes, Emma (May 3, 2014). "Diane Keaton: 'I love Woody. And I believe my friend'". The Guardian. Retrieved October 7, 2015.
  6.  Kaufman, Joanne (May 15, 2015). "Diane Keaton and Morgan Freeman's Real Estate Adventure". The New York Times. Retrieved July 23, 2016.
  7.  "Diane Keaton on the Irish people in her life". Irish Examiner. June 19, 2017. Retrieved October 8, 2023.
  8.  Stated in Then Again, by Diane Keaton, 2011
  9.  "'Then Again': Actress Diane Keaton looks back - today > books". TODAY.com. Archived from the original on October 17, 2015. Retrieved October 7, 2015.
  10.  "Then Again with Diane Keaton | Fisher Center for Alzheimer's Research Foundation". Fisher Center for Alzheimer's Research Foundation. September 14, 2012. Archived from the original on September 22, 2018.
  11.  "Diane Keaton interview". Fresh Air. WHYY Philadelphia. January 1, 1997. Retrieved February 27, 2006.
  12.  Nancy Griffin. "American Original" More Magazine. March 2004.
  13.  Santa Ana High School Yearbook, The Ariel 1963
  14.  "Diane Keaton: A Nervous Wreck on the Verge of a Breakthrough". Movie Crazed. 1974. Archived from the original on July 29, 2020. Retrieved February 22, 2006.
  15.  Dunne, Dominick (February 1985). "Hide-and-Seek with Diane Keaton". Vanity Fair. Retrieved August 23, 2022.
  16.  Keefe, Terry (January 2004). "Falling in love again with Diane Keaton". Venice Magazine. Archived from the original on November 2, 2004. Retrieved November 4, 2004.
  17.  "Jack Nicholson Falls Hard for the Romantic Comedy, "Something's Gotta Give". About.com. December 2003. Archived from the original on June 7, 2011. Retrieved March 24, 2006.
  18.  "Diane Keaton". Internet Broadway Databas. Retrieved May 30, 2008.
  19.  "Diane Keaton: The Comeback Kid". CBS News. May 3, 2004. Retrieved February 22, 2006.
  20.  "1969 Tony Awards Nominees". American Theatre Wing. Retrieved August 11, 2023.
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  208.  "10th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards Nominees & Recipients". SAG Awards. Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. Retrieved October 13, 2025.
  209.  "HARVARD THESPIANS HONOR KEATON WITH PUDDING POT". DeseretNews.com. February 14, 1991. Retrieved September 26, 2018.
  210.  "Past Muse Award Honorees | New York Women in Film & Television". www.nywift.org. February 13, 2018. Retrieved September 26, 2018.
  211.  "Golden Apple Awards (1996)". IMDb. Retrieved September 26, 2018.
  212.  "Elle Women in Hollywood Awards (1998)". IMDb. Retrieved September 26, 2018.
  213.  "US Comedy Arts Festival (2004)". IMDb. Retrieved September 26, 2018.
  214.  "Honorees Database | Hollywood Film Awards". Hollywood Film Awards. Archived from the original on March 3, 2021. Retrieved September 26, 2018.
  215.  "Lincoln Center to honor Keaton". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved September 26, 2018.
  216.  "Golden Camera, Germany (2014)". IMDb. Retrieved September 26, 2018.
  217.  "Zurich Film Festival (2014)". IMDb. Retrieved September 26, 2018.
  218.  "American Film Institute - 2017 Diane Keaton Tribute". www.afi.com. Retrieved September 26, 2018.
  219.  "David di Donatello Awards (2018)". IMDb. Retrieved September 26, 2018.

Works cited

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Diane Keaton, a Star of ‘Annie Hall’ and ‘First Wives Club,’ Dies at 79

She brought an unconventional personality to scores of roles on television and in movies ranging from zany comedies like “Sleeper” to piercing dramas like “The Godfather.”

Listen to this article · 10:29 min Learn more

By Anita Gates

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Diane Keaton, the vibrant, sometimes unconventional, always charmingly self-deprecating actress who won an Oscar for Woody Allen’s comedy “Annie Hall” and appeared in some 100 movie and television roles, an almost equal balance of them in comedies like “Sleeper” and “The First Wives Club” and dramas like “The Godfather” and “Marvin’s Room,” has died. She was 79.

Her death was confirmed by Dori Rath, who produced a number of Ms. Keaton’s most recent films. She did not say where or when Ms. Keaton died or cite a cause.

Ms. Keaton was 31 and a veteran of eight films, most of them comedies, when she starred as the title character in “Annie Hall” (1977), a single woman in New York City with ambitions, insecurities and definite style. Annie is known for cheerful psychiatric breakthroughs, fashions that look like men’s wear, questionable driving skills and lingering hints of an all-too-wholesome Midwestern upbringing.

ImageThree formally dressed people, two of them holding Oscars, stand in front of a pink curtain and a large version of the Oscar statue.
Ms. Keaton at the 1978 Academy Awards, where she was a winner for “Annie Hall.” With her were Charles H. Joffe, left, the movie’s producer, and Jack Nicholson, a presenter, with whom she would later co-star.Credit...Associated Press

She accepted her Oscar wearing a linen jacket, two full linen skirts, a scarf over a white shirt and black string tie, and high heels with socks. In her 2014 memoir, “Then Again,” she looked back on the moment, with some regret, as “my ‘la-de-da’ layered get-up.”

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“Annie Hall,” which won three other Oscars including best picture, brought Ms. Keaton a shower of additional honors, including acting awards from the National Board of Review, the National Society of Film Critics, the New York Film Critics Circle and the British Academy of Film and Television Artists.

The Hollywood Reporter’s review of the movie called Ms. Keaton “the consummate actress of our generation” and observed that she “adds the charm and warmth and spontaneity” that make “Annie Hall” plausible.

Ms. Keaton did not win another Oscar, but she received three other nominations. One was for the sweeping Oscar-winning drama “Reds” (1981), in which she played Louise Bryant, an intense 1910s writer hanging out with Greenwich Village socialists and Bolshevik revolutionaries, notably the activist journalist Jack Reed (played by Warren Beatty, who also directed).

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The two of them stand together, looking nervous, in front of a poster for the Bergman movie “Face to Face.”
Ms. Keaton with Woody Allen in “Annie Hall.” Mr. Allen, who cast Ms. Keaton in many of his films, said that “with the exception of Judy Holliday, she’s the finest screen comedienne we’ve ever seen.”Credit...Everett Collection

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Another was for “Marvin’s Room” (1996), in which she played the selfless daughter who is taking care of her slowly dying father and her scatterbrained aunt when she receives a diagnosis of leukemia and needs a bone-marrow transplant. Her co-stars included Meryl Streep, Leonardo DiCaprio and Hume Cronyn.

Her final nomination was for “Something’s Gotta Give” (2003), a comedy, written and directed by Nancy Meyers, about a successful playwright who turns an extremely tearful breakup into a new hit comedy. She attracts the attentions of a handsome, much younger doctor (Keanu Reeves) and inspires a sexist man in his 60s (Jack Nicholson) to fall in love with a woman his own age.

Ms. Keaton was also a director. Her first film was “Heaven” (1987), a documentary on beliefs about the afterlife. In her last, she directed herself, Meg Ryan and Lisa Kudrow in the comic drama “Hanging Up” (2000), based on a novel by Delia Ephron.

“Unstrung Heroes” (1995), her first foray into fictional filmmaking, starred Andie MacDowell, John Turturro and Michael Richards. The story of a teenage boy’s idiosyncratic uncles was selected for Un Certain Regard, the prestigious sidebar at the Cannes Film Festival. Peter Travers, reviewing it for Rolling Stone, said it “works like a charm.” Rita Kempley of The Washington Post called it “sweet madness” and a “sensitive coming-of-age story.”

A film career was always Ms. Keaton’s goal. She explained her aversion to theater as a lifelong pursuit on “CBS Sunday Morning” in 2010. “Night after night? Doing a play?” she said, putting an imaginary gun to her head. “That’s my idea of hell.”

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She wears a wool cap and a fur coat and smiles as he nuzzles her neck.
Ms. Keaton with Warren Beatty in “Reds” (1981). Her performance as the writer Louise Bryant, opposite Mr. Beatty as the activist journalist Jack Reed, earned her the second of her four Oscar nominations.Credit...Paramount Pictures/Everett Collection

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The two women sit next to each other. Ms. Keaton looks nervous; Ms. Streep, who holds a cigarette in her right hand, smiles enigmatically.
Ms. Keaton, left, and Meryl Streep in ”Marvin's Room” (1996), for which she received her third Oscar nomination. Her other co-stars in that film included Leonardo DiCaprio and Hume Cronyn.Credit...Phil Caruso/Miramax Films

Diane Hall was born on Jan. 5, 1946, in Los Angeles. She was the eldest of four children of John Newton Ignatius Hall, known as Jack, a civil engineer, and Dorothy Deanne (Keaton) Hall, an amateur photographer who was crowned Mrs. Los Angeles in a beauty pageant for homemakers.

Diane’s father gave her the nickname Perkins and often addressed her as “Di-annie,” Ms. Keaton wrote in her memoir.

She grew up in Santa Ana, Calif., near Los Angeles, and briefly attended community colleges, first Santa Ana and then Orange Coast. At 19, she dropped out and moved to New York to study acting at the Neighborhood Playhouse.

She made her Broadway debut in the hit musical “Hair,” first as a member of the ensemble and then as Sheila, the female lead. (She turned down the $50 bonus offered to actors who were willing to appear nude in one scene.)

Her Broadway career continued, and her partnership with Mr. Allen began, with “Play It Again, Sam” (1969), in which she played a romantically desirable married woman opposite Mr. Allen as a nebbishy divorced friend. That performance earned her a Tony Award nomination for best featured actress in a play.

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Her film debut came the next year, when she played an unhappy young wife at a suburban wedding in “Lovers and Other Strangers” (1970). Then, after a handful of television appearances, she played Kay Adams, the clearly non-Sicilian girlfriend turned trusting wife of Michael Corleone (played by Al Pacino), in Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Godfather” (1972). (She and Mr. Pacino began dating in 1974, the year “The Godfather Part II” was released.)

For all the acclaim that “The Godfather” drew, Ms. Keaton, ever self-effacing, hardly raved about her own performance in it. “Right from the beginning I thought I wasn’t right for the part,” she told The Times after the movie was released. “I haven’t seen the film. I just decided I would save myself the pain. I had to see a few scenes because I had to loop — dub in some dialogue — and I couldn’t stand looking at myself. I thought I looked so terrible, just like a stick in those ’40s clothes!”

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They sit at a table, with a pitcher of some kind of dark liquid between them, and gaze longingly at each other. He wears an Army uniform; she wears a polka-dot dress and a straw hat.
Ms. Keaton with Al Pacino in "The Godfather" (1972). For all the acclaim that film drew, Ms. Keaton once said, “Right from the beginning I thought I wasn’t right for the part.”Credit...Paramount Pictures

Three years later, the same year “Annie Hall” was released, she starred in the wrenching drama “Looking for Mr. Goodbar” as a young teacher who prowls singles bars almost every night. Molly Haskell’s review in New York magazine called Ms. Keaton’s “the performance of a lifetime” and the movie itself “harrowing, powerful, appalling.” Some observed that although she won the Oscar for “Annie Hall,” many voters had been influenced by “Mr. Goodbar,” which they considered brilliant but too hard to take.

She appeared regularly in Mr. Allen’s films, starting with the movie version of “Play It Again, Sam” (1972), directed by Herbert Ross; “Sleeper” (1973), a comedy set in a dystopian future; and “Love and Death” (1975), set in czarist Russia. She also starred in two of Mr. Allen’s more serious films, “Interiors” (1978) and the multiple-award-winning “Manhattan” (1979).

Although she dismissed her early singing ambitions as foolish, she sang two numbers in “Annie Hall” and made a cameo appearance as a 1940s nightclub singer in Mr. Allen’s “Radio Days” (1987). Their last film together was “Manhattan Murder Mystery” (1993).

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In addition to “Reds,” “Marvin’s Room” and the sequels to “The Godfather” (1974 and 1990), she starred in several other dramas, some with satirical undertones. They included “Shoot the Moon” (1982), in which she and Albert Finney played an unhappy California couple going through a divorce; “Crimes of the Heart” (1986), Bruce Beresford’s adaptation of Beth Henley’s Southern Gothic, playing the spinster sister of Jessica Lange and Sissy Spacek; and the mini-series “The Young Pope” (2016), as a nun who is personal secretary and confidante to the pope, played by Jude Law.

But her talent for sophisticated farce didn’t go to waste. Before “Something’s Gotta Give,” she appeared in other comedies directed or written by Ms. Meyers: “Baby Boom” (1987), opposite Sam Shepard, as a big-city executive who inherits a baby and moves to Vermont; and “Father of the Bride” (1991) and its 1995 sequel, opposite Steve Martin.

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The three women, all wearing off-white outfits, stand in a row and look to their right.
From left, Ms. Keaton, Goldie Hawn and Bette Midler in “The First Wives Club” (1996), a major box-office hit.Credit...Paramount/Everett Collection
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The two of them walk along a beach. She is wearing a white cap, which she holds onto with both hands. They are both smiling.
Ms. Keaton with Jack Nicholson in the 2003 comedy “Something’s Gotta Give.” Her performance as a playwright who turns a tearful breakup into a hit comedy earned Ms. Keaton her fourth Oscar nomination. Credit...Bob Marshak/Columbia Pictures

Speaking at a comedy festival in Aspen, Colo., in 2004, Ms. Meyers compared Ms. Keaton’s comedic skills to those of two big stars of an earlier generation, Katharine Hepburn and Jean Arthur. And Mr. Allen himself went even further. “My opinion is that with the exception of Judy Holliday, she’s the finest screen comedienne we’ve ever seen,” he told The Times.

Ms. Keaton’s other comedy films included “Harry and Walter Go to New York” (1975), set in the 1890s, with James Caan and Elliott Gould; “The Family Stone” (2005), with an ensemble cast including Dermot Mulroney, Sarah Jessica Parker and Craig T. Nelson; “5 Flights Up” (2014), opposite Morgan Freeman; and “Poms” (2019), about retirement-age cheerleaders.

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“The First Wives Club” (1996), in which she starred with Goldie Hawn and Bette Midler, was a comedy of revenge — or justice, depending on your point of view. Ms. Keaton’s character, for instance, learns that the therapist she has come to trust is actually having an affair with her estranged husband. It was a major box-office hit.

Her final film was “Summer Camp” (2024), a comedy about three old friends at an eventful reunion.

Ms. Keaton’s personal life could at times be fodder for the gossip pages as they tracked her romantic relationships, including with Mr. Beatty and Mr. Allen in addition to Mr. Pacino. She never married and adopted two children, a son, Duke Keaton, and a daughter, Dexter Keaton. Complete information on her survivors was not immediately available.

“Getting older hasn’t made me wiser,” she told People magazine, with a typically self-critical eye, in 2019, insisting cheerfully, “I don’t know anything, and I haven’t learned.”

Over the years, though, she wrote a dozen or so books — volumes on fashion, art and architecture as well as memoirs. Writing in The New York Times Book Review in 2014, Sheila Weller called Ms. Keaton’s memoir “Then Again” “provocatively honest” and Ms. Keaton “bitingly wry, ironic and tough about herself.”

“Then Again” offered Ms. Keaton an opportunity to observe, “I learned I couldn’t shed light on love other than to feel its comings and goings and be grateful.”

It also gave her a chance to challenge an adage or two. “If beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” she wrote, “does that mean mirrors are a waste of time?”

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Diane Keaton: A Life in Pictures

On and off the screen, the star with a distinctive fashion sense was a singular presence.

By The New York Times

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Diane Keaton in round sunglasses standing in front of a plant.
Credit...Associated Press

Diane Keaton at the Cannes Film Festival in 1987.

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Woody Allen and Keaton, his girlfriend at the time, holding hands in London in 1970.
Credit...Pierre Manevy/Hulton Archive, via Getty Images

Woody Allen and Keaton, his girlfriend at the time, in London in 1970.

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Keaton wearing a polka dot red dress and Al Pacino wearing a military uniform in “The Godfather” in 1972.
Credit...Paramount Pictures

Keaton and Al Pacino in the 1972 film “The Godfather.”

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Credit...Getty Images

Tony Roberts and Keaton on the set of the 1972 film “Play It Again, Sam," written by Allen and directed by Herbert Ross.

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Allen and Keaton in “Sleeper” in 1973. They are in a futuristic vehicle.

Allen and Keaton in “Sleeper” in 1973.

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Keaton during the filming of “Love and Death” in 1974.
Credit...Getty Images

Keaton during the filming of “Love and Death.” The film was written and directed by Allen, who also starred in it.

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Keaton with Allen in New York circa 1970.
Credit...Art Zelin/Getty Images

Keaton with Allen in New York around 1970.

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Keaton with James Caan, Michael Caine and Elliott Gould in the 1976 film “Harry and Walter Go to New York.”
Credit...Getty Images

Keaton with James Caan, Michael Caine and Elliott Gould in the 1976 film “Harry and Walter Go to New York.”

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Keaton, wearing a black vest, black hat and sunglasses, with Allen, who is carrying a tennis racket, in “Annie Hall.”

Keaton with Allen in “Annie Hall.”

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Keaton and Allen in silhouette on a park bench.

Keaton starred again with Allen in “Manhattan” in 1979.

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Keaton at the 1978 Academy Awards, where she won the Oscar for best performance by an actress in a leading role for “Annie Hall.”
Credit...Bettmann

Keaton at the 1978 Academy Awards, where she won the Oscar for best performance by an actress in a leading role for “Annie Hall.”

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Keaton and Warren Beatty at the 54th annual Academy Awards in 1982. They co-starred in the movie “Reds” and were both nominated for awards.
Credit...Getty Images

Keaton and Warren Beatty at the 54th annual Academy Awards in 1982. They co-starred in the movie “Reds” and were both nominated for awards.

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Goldie Hawn, Keaton and Bette Midler at the premiere of “The First Wives Club” in Los Angeles in 1996.
Credit...Frank Wiese/Associated Press

Goldie Hawn, Keaton and Bette Midler at the premiere of “The First Wives Club” in Los Angeles in 1996.

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Keaton with Jack Nicholson at the 79th Academy Awards in 2007.
Credit...Monica Almeida/The New York Times

Keaton with Jack Nicholson at the 79th Academy Awards in 2007.

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Keaton at a news conference for “Something’s Gotta Give” in 2003.
Credit...Vera Anderson

Keaton at a news conference for “Something’s Gotta Give” in 2003.

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Keaton at the American Film Institute Gala honoring her in 2017. She is wearing black laced boots, as well as a black and white outfit with a large black belt.
Credit...Associated Press

Keaton at the American Film Institute Gala honoring her in 2017.

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Hollywood and Fans Remember Diane Keaton

Tributes from colleagues and fans flooded social media as they learned of her death. Many celebrated her onscreen legacy and some noted her impact on their lives.

Listen to this article · 2:48 min Learn more

By Jin Yu Young

Fans and colleagues on Saturday remembered Diane Keaton, who died at 79, leaving a legacy as a vulnerable actress onscreen and a compassionate colleague while away from the camera.

News of her death rippled across Hollywood on Saturday, with tributes flooding social media.

Colleagues said they admired her work in a variety of dramatic roles and romantic comedies and for the way she related to other people.

Bette Midler, who was a co-star with Keaton in the movie “The First Wives Club,” praised her on Instagram as “brilliant, beautiful, extraordinary.”

Midler said she was “hilarious, a complete original, and completely without guile, or any of the competitiveness one would have expected from such a star.”

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Kimberly Williams-Paisley, an actress who played the daughter of Keaton’s character in “Father of the Bride,” said that working with her “will always be one of the highlights of my life,” and posted a picture of them in a scene from the movie.

In a social media post, Marc Shaiman, a composer for film, television and theater, called her a “true original” and an “irreplaceable light.”

The movie director Paul Feig, known for the films “Bridesmaids” in 2011 and “Ghostbusters” in 2016 said on social media that Keaton was “an amazingly kind and creative person who also just happened to be a Hollywood legend.”

Ben Stiller, the actor and comedian, called Keaton an “icon of style, humor and comedy.”

Elizabeth Tulloch, an actress, shared her gratitude for Keaton’s love for animals on what was Keaton’s last Instagram post, a picture of her with her dog Reggie. Keaton was a vocal animal rights lobbyist and endorsed the Big Cat Public Safety Act, which would ban the private ownership of big cats.

“Thank you for your talent, your animal advocacy, your immeasurable charm,” Tulloch wrote.

Piers Morgan, the British television personality who has a reputation for being hard to impress, called her one of “Hollywood’s greatest actresses.”

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In a group for film enthusiasts on Facebook, Keaton’s fans remembered her legacy and discussed what they thought were her best performances in a career that spanned decades.

Among those mentioned were her depiction of Louise Bryant, a feminist writer and activist, in the 1981 movie “Reds”; and the 2003 movie “Something’s Gotta Give,” in which she played Erica Barry, a successful Broadway playwright.

“She brought such depth & vulnerability to every role she played,” wrote one fan in a Facebook comment thread. “So glad that I have a lot of her films on DVD. Rest in peace Diane. We will miss you but you will never be forgotten.”

Rylee Kirk contributed reporting.

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Diane Keaton Was the Definition of a Style Icon

Her legacy will include the ways she shaped fashion, rather than allowing fashion to shape her.

Listen to this article · 4:33 min Learn more
diane keaton with a white coat on belted with a black belt, wearing a black hat and black gloves with her fingers exposed
Diane Keaton had an affinity for clothes that put her in the tradition of stars like Marlene Dietrich and Katharine Hepburn who refused to conform to gender or social expectations.Credit...Kevin Winter/Getty Images

By Vanessa Friedman

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Diane Keaton, the Oscar-winning actress whose death at 79 was revealed this weekend, was one of the last movie stars to arrive in Hollywood before big brands changed the celeb dressing game. She never used a stylist, but came with an aesthetic so clearly and compellingly formed that she shaped fashion, rather than allowing fashion to shape her.

As a result, her penchant for men’s suiting, for layers, for turtlenecks and coats as evening wear and accessories — bowler hats, glove, belts, glasses — is as much a part of her legacy as her indelible roles in “Annie Hall” — the film that first introduced the Keaton aesthetic to the world — and “Reds.”

And it’s a reminder, in a time when it often seems that movie stars have outsourced their own taste and traded away wardrobe decision-making for financial security in the form of brand ambassadorships, that personal style can be its own powerful currency.

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Ms. Keaton inspired not just her early director (and one-time boyfriend), Woody Allen, who famously asked Ms. Keaton to dress herself for “Annie Hall,” but also designers such as Ralph Lauren, Jenna Lyons and Thom Browne. It was the impetus for two books from Ms. Keaton herself: the 2014 essay collection, “Let’s Just Say it Wasn’t Pretty” about finding and staying true to your own style, and the 2024 coffee table tome, “Diane Keaton: Fashion First.”

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diane keaton with woody allen on a rooftop in a scene from the film annie hall
Ms. Keaton’s penchant for men’s suiting is as much a part of her legacy as her indelible roles in “Annie Hall” (shown here, with director, co-star and one-time boyfriend Woody Allen) — the film that first introduced the Keaton aesthetic to the world.Credit...MGM
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Diane Keatonon the beach with Jack Nicholson both wearing white in a scene from a film.
Ms. Keaton became an avatar of the “coastal grandma” look, starring in the film “Something’s Gotta Give” with Jack Nicholson.Credit...Alamy

Mr. Lauren wrote the introduction for that one, noting “I am often credited with dressing Diane in her Oscar-winning role as Annie Hall. Not so. Annie’s style was Diane’s style.” And when it came to that style, he wrote, it was “not defined by the moment. It’s not about trends. It’s authentic and forever.” It was what people now call a “personal brand,” before anyone thought to categorize it that way.

That’s why decades after “Annie Hall,” Ms. Keaton also became a muse for the director Nancy Meyers, the avatar of the “coastal grandma” look, and as recently as last year created an eyewear collaboration with Look Optic.

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The Keaton aesthetic (let’s call it that) was sourced, at least in the beginning, from Goodwill stores, where her photographer mother used to take Ms. Keaton shopping (a lot of Ms. Keaton’s costumes in “Annie Hall” came from her Goodwill wardrobe), and was rooted in the sort of physical insecurity almost anyone could understand. Ms. Keaton wanted to be Raquel Welch, she wrote in “Fashion First,” but when that clearly wasn’t happening — wrong body, wrong hair — she zeroed in on Cary Grant as a role model and took his dressing axioms to heart.

“I had no doubt I could be the person I wanted to be if I applied Cary Grant’s concept that ‘clothes make the man,’” Ms. Keaton wrote in her book of essays. “Or, in my case, ‘clothes make the woman.’”

Hence her affinity for ties, for pleated trousers, the occasional vest — clothes that both put Ms. Keaton in the tradition of stars like Marlene Dietrich and Katharine Hepburn who refused to conform to gender or social expectations, and covered up what she viewed as her flaws. She wore hats, she said, because she didn’t like her hair. Turtlenecks because they hid the neck and framed her face. And so on.

All those layers — even two skirts to the Oscars in 1978, when she won — ironically, gave her freedom because they gave her security. “You could call a good two-thirds of my wardrobe an impenetrable fortress,” she wrote. Her approach to red carpet dressing was effectively the rebuttal to today’s naked dressing trend, though it got just as much attention. Another point worth considering.

She never shied away from discussions of fashion, or dismissed the role it played in her life; for her it wasn’t frivolous, it was a deep-rooted part of her identity. Onscreen and off. It wasn’t just about her characters, it was about her own character.

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diane keaton sitting next to cardi b, anna wintour and baz lurhrmann at a fashion show
Ms. Keaton seated front row at the Thom Browne fashion show in 2023.Credit...Getty Images

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Which didn’t mean she couldn’t poke fun at herself and her choices. For her, the faux pas were part of the process. In 2023, she posted a series of photos on Instagram, where she had 2.6 million followers, with the note “Here lies my endless fashion mistakes … May they rest in peace.” She said she admired Joan Rivers, despite Ms. Rivers’s tendency to make her a target for her Fashion Police. She appreciated any women with the courage of her own dressing convictions.

Her goal, Ms. Keaton wrote, the whole point of getting dressed, was “finding whatever works for you to get out the door every day.” She found it, and she encouraged other people to find it too by being her own best example. Accordingly, though she often sat front row at shows during fashion week, it was as inspiration, rather than advertisement.

Her style wasn’t for sale, and that made it priceless.

Vanessa Friedman has been the fashion director and chief fashion critic for The Times since 2014.

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Critic’s Notebook

The Surprising Power of Diane Keaton’s Emotional Transparency

Earlier roles in “The Godfather” and later roles in “Something’s Gotta Give” showed the depth and nuance of the actress whom we met in “Annie Hall.”

Listen to this article · 7:00 min Learn more
In a scene dominated by images of beige, a woman in a darkened interior looks warily off in the distance.
Diane Keaton in the final scene of “The Godfather”: her character is a mirror for viewers.Credit...Paramount Pictures

By Manohla Dargis

It has often been quipped about the onscreen pairing of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers that he gave her class and she gave him sex. With his romantic comedy “Annie Hall” (1977), Woody Allen gave Diane Keaton one of the defining roles of her career while she, for better and, yes, for worse, helped establish him as a credible-enough romantic lead.

Allen had jokes and timing. Keaton did too, but she also had emotional transparency, a tremulous quality that drew you to her, and expressive eyes that watered easily but could also light up with persuasive joy. After “Annie Hall,” she also deservedly had an Oscar for best actress.

Keaton, whose death was reported on Saturday, was a star for decades, though she began to shine most brightly in the 1970s, the era that saw her in some of her greatest roles. Among these, of course, was Francis Ford Coppola’s “Godfather” saga, in which she played Kay to Al Pacino’s Michael Corleone. In the first two movies, Kay is one of the few female roles of any substance in a story filled with juicy male characters and swaggering, domineering actors. That imbalance alone makes Kay seem an impossible part, but it’s especially tricky because she has to be an intermediary between you and the Corleones’ brutal, cloistered world. You may not necessarily think of Keaton when you think of these films, but she’s crucial to them.

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This is made graphically clear near the end of the first film, after Michael’s sister accuses him of murdering her husband. After he orders her taken away, a distraught Kay asks if it’s true. With bloodless cool, Michael lies, saying no and takes her in his arms. A relieved Kay goes to an adjacent room to make them drinks and sees two men kiss her husband’s hand, one addressing Michael as “Don Corleone.” As another begins closing the door separating Kay from the men, Coppola cuts to Kay silently staring at the camera with a look of stunned, horrified understanding. She now sees her husband for who he is and, as she looks at him, the door swings shut in front of her, obscuring her like a closing tomb. It’s the last shot in the film.

Keaton’s emotional openness, her readability, is critical to “The Godfather” because of what Kay and Michael mean to each other and how their relationship speaks to the shadowy whole. The film is the story of a family and a criminal syndicate, but it is also a tragedy about a marriage, its secrets and lies. Kay’s love for Michael, her innocence and sweetness, help make him an immediately sympathetic presence, while the hurt that later clouds her eyes foreshadows Michael’s betrayal of her and his dramatically shifting role from the family’s baby boy to its patriarch. From the start, Kay is a mirror for the viewers, who are also similarly seduced by Michael, as well as fascinated, repelled and helplessly hooked on him.

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In an outdoor scene with people blurred behind them, a woman in a straw hat and a man in a military uniform sit at a table looking at each other. There’s a half-full pitcher of a dark liquid and a plate of food on the table.
Kay’s innocence and sweetness makes Michael (Al Pacino) immediately sympathetic.Credit...Paramount Pictures

Keaton starred in other serious films, notably “Reds” (1981), Warren Beatty’s sweeping romantic epic about the journalist and communist activist John Reed, who chronicled the Russian Revolution in his book “Ten Days That Shook the World.” Keaton plays another journalist, Louise Bryant, a freethinker who becomes involved with Beatty’s Reed and their pal, the playwright Eugene O’Neill (Jack Nicholson). There are few actresses who could hold their own while sharing the screen with such supreme scene-stealers as Beatty and Nicholson, but Keaton does despite some wobbles. The character can seem absurd (blame the script, not the actress), but Keaton’s Louise also helps tether the film’s ideas in feeling.

Decades later, Keaton and Nicholson reunited in Nancy Meyers’s frothy 2003 romantic comedy, “Something’s Gotta Give.” I resisted the movie at first, in part because it takes place in one of Meyers’s gauzily perfect bubble worlds with their pretty white people, fantastically expensive kitchens and bespoke gardens. In this fantasy, Keaton plays Erica Barry, a successful, divorced playwright in her 50s with a typical Meyers dream house in the Hamptons. It’s there that Erica’s daughter (Amanda Peet) brings home her latest romantic interest, Harry Sanborn, a 63-year-old music-industry guy and aggressively confirmed bachelor whom Nicholson plays with a persuasive mix of lustiness and boorishness.

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In a beach scene, a man in a white button-down and khaki pants and a woman in a cream turtleneck and white pants sit laughing on a blanket. There’s a wicker tray with a wine bottle and glasses between them.
Jack Nicholson opposite Keaton in “Something’s Gotta Give.”Credit...Bob Marshak/Columbia Pictures

Meyers tips her hand early the moment you hear Nicholson’s Harry enthusing about the women he dates. “Ah,” he says, “the sweet, uncomplicated satisfaction of the younger woman,” as various long-limbed beauties stride across the movie’s bouncy opening credits. Harry is a total horndog, but after assorted comic complications, Erica brings him to heel. First, though, Harry has to nearly die (heart attack) because sometimes that’s what it takes for an older man to notice a woman who’s more in his age bracket. He recuperates at Erica’s house, where they circle each other warily before falling into bed. Things remain complicated and Harry breaks her heart, which she repairs with help from a besotted doctor played by Keanu Reeves.

By the time “Something’s Gotta Give” was released, Keaton had played a range of roles, not all of which asked much of her. It’s vital to understanding her career to remember that the same year that “Annie Hall” was released, she had also starred in “Looking for Mr. Goodbar,” in which she played a teacher from an oppressive religious family who’s murdered by a one-night stand; it’s a bleak take on what women risk in an ostensibly sexually liberated world. The critic Molly Haskell rightly praised Keaton, noting her “instinctual delicacy.” Keaton’s ability to show you a character’s vulnerability was as striking as her gift for showing you what can lie beneath such sensitivity, including neediness at its rawest and most acutely exposed.

Keaton continued to take on serious roles, both worthy (the 1982 marriage drama “Shoot the Moon”) and not (the 1984 spy intrigue “The Little Drummer Girl”). She made more comedies, too, including “Baby Boom” (1987), which Meyers wrote with her soon-to-be ex, Charles Shyer, who also directed. By the time Meyers and Keaton joined forces for “Something’s Gotta Give,” they were both veterans of an industry that, like Nicholson’s character, was grossly dismissive of women, though particularly older ones. If it took me a while to come around to “Something’s Gotta Give,” it was largely because it seemed too obvious and silly, and too removed from the real world and its problems. And yet, and yet …

I kept returning to that film again and again, occasionally just catching it on TV and then happily seeking it out. After watching it more times than I remember, I copped to the fact that I had fallen as hard for it as Keaton and Nicholson’s characters do for each other. Some of my adoration comes just from the pleasure of watching skilled, well-synced performers pretending to fall in love. Years later, I also realized that what else I loved was Keaton, who by the time she made this movie had successfully transcended a male filmmaker’s la-di-da ideal to become a female filmmaker’s avatar: a beautiful, funny, soulful, successful and blissfully independent woman with lines on her face, a penchant for turtlenecks, a blissed-out Reeves as a consolation prize and a besotted Nicholson, ta-da, finally and gratefully at her side.

Manohla Dargis is the chief film critic for The Times.

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