Perhaps best known for her collaborations with Woody Allen and her role in the Godfather trilogy the actress Diane Keaton was equally at home with both comedy and at times often heavyweight drama.
Born Diane Hall on 5th January 1946 in Orange County, Los Angeles to an engineer father and a housewife mum she was the eldest of four children. Keaton enjoyed appearing in school plays and took up drama in college but soon dropped out to pursue theatre roles taking her mother’s maiden name Keaton as there was already a Diane Hall registered with Equity. She landed a role as an understudy in the Broadway production of Hair. At the same time she battled Bulimia when the director told her she needed to lose weight and received with the help of therapy.
It was after this. In 1969, that she collaborated with Woody Allen, a figure who would be pivotal in her career, when they starred in the broad way version of his play , ‘Plat it Again , Sam’ receiving a Tony nomination in the process. It caught the attention of filmmakers making her film debut in 1970’s ‘Lovers and other Strangers’ but the following year would see her land a pivotal role in The Godfather as Michael Corleone’s girlfriend then wife, a role that she would rerun to for the two sequels in 1974 and 1990.
But the 1970’s saw her collaborate further with Woody Allen in his film version of Play it Again Sam, followed by Sleeper,, Love and death and then in what would be her defining role in 1977’s Annie Hall tat won her a Best Actress role and inspired a generation of women to follow what turned out to be her own style of wearing traditional menswear that became iconic. Allen and Keaton were I a relationship and much of the script was rumoured to be based on their life together at that time. She would appear in three more of his films (Interiors, Manhattan and Manhattan Murder Mystery) and was vocal in her defence of Allen when accusations of sexual abuse were made against him by his stepdaughter.
He was not the only director that was would repeatedly and Nancy Meyers helmed Baby Boom, Father of the Bride 1 & 2 and Something’s Gotta Give which earned her an Oscar nomination opposite Jack Nicholson and would be the last time she would be Oscar nominated having previously been nominated also for Reds (1982) and Marvin’s Room (1997). Unlike so many actors her career was almost entirely in film with only the occasional foray into TV with roles TV series such as HBO’s The Young Pope (2016), But she also went behind the camera as director helming several music videos for Belinda Carlisle, episodes in TV series Twin Peaks, a documentary, a couple of TV films and a feature film Unstring Heroes starring Andie MacDowell. 2017 saw her awarded a lifetime achievement award by the American Film Institute and 2022 saw her hands immortalised on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Though she dated several of her co-stars including Al Pacino, Warren Beatty and Woody Allen she never married but in her mid fifties she adopted two children. She also became a carer for her mother who had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 1993 before passing away in 2008. At the same time she also cared for her younger brother who passed away in 2021 having suffered from mental health issues.
Her gift for self-deprecation earned her many fans among fellow actors with her last film being 2024’s Summer Camp alongside Kathy Bates and Eugene Levy. She was also an eager instagrammer posting pictures of often melancholy subjects such as abandoned and derelict shops.
The death of Diane Keaton came as a shock to many. Having not been seen for some months and reports were that she had lost a lot of weight recently. She was found by Los Angeles Fire Dept at her home and taken to a local hospital where she died. She was 79 years of age.
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