Diane Keaton Was One of a Kind

And she will be missed

When I was in high school, back in the 1980s, people used to say to me, “You remind me of Diane Keaton in Annie Hall.” That was what introduced me not just to movies, but to the great Diane herself. In searching out her work, I discovered a way to escape real life and live vicariously through movies.

She was more to me than that. I looked to her as a role model all through my life, not just in how she lived her life, but in the roles she played. It is hard to believe that she is gone at just 79 when she seemed to have more life left in her.

Her career spanned over 60 films, and her range extended from screwball comedies like Play It Again, Sam, Sleeper, and Annie Hall to serious dramas like The Godfather I and II.

Woody Allen made her a star and captured her spirit in Annie Hall. The film is a loose sketch of her original name, Diane Hall, which she changed to Diane Keaton. How she transitioned from someone naive to someone more sophisticated and educated, ultimately leaving him behind. I’ve seen it so many times I could recite almost the entire movie by heart.

Here is a nice overview of her work from the American Film Institute’s Lifetime Achievement Award, followed by Woody Allen’s brilliant tribute to her.

So her work in Annie Hall was to play Annie at the beginning:

And then to play Annie later, after she’s changed, which meant she lost that thing about her that made her charming, but also she goes on to become someone of substance. And so it goes.

In some ways, Diane Keaton was always and would forever be Annie Hall, even if she went on to star in numerous films over the course of several decades afterward. The more she lived her life, the more accurate that portrait of her as Annie would prove to be.

She is one of those actresses I’d watch in anything, no matter how bad the movie. The list of her performances that I love the most is long. I’m not sure I could pick just one. These include:

Annie Hall
Manhattan
Reds
Crimes of the Heart
Baby Boom
Father of the Bride
The Good Mother
Hanging Up

It wasn’t only acting that captured her interest. She was an artist, a photographer, and a designer. From fashion to architecture, her curiosity took her down many different paths. She was a writer and a director at times. She never married, though she did adopt two kids.

She was the kind of person who was unpredictable in everything she did. You never know what will fly out of her mouth, and when she speaks, you wait to hear what her answer will be. She never gave canned answers. She was never a phony and, mercifully, never political.

She did not outlive the famous men she dated, like Jack Nicholson, Al Pacino, Warren Beatty, and Woody Allen. Here is Pacino talking about the two of them in The Godfather.

And here she is, like no other, accepting her Lifetime Achievement Award:

In her acceptance speech, which was not indulgent nor long, just short and sweet, she sang the song from Annie Hall, Seems Like Old Times.

It was a way to say, though we’ve gone our separate ways, it’s always nice to see each other again, always nice to say hello.

I used to see her driving every morning after she dropped her kids off at school. We would pass each other, and I would see her face, untouched and deeply lined. I remember thinking at the time that I never wanted to get that old. I never wanted that to happen to my face - being a vain and stupid person, of course. Now I think please let me get that old. Let me that okay with it. Living long, living at all is the reward.

She was herself, even up to the end, because we can mark her in time. We can see the life she lived, how long she lived, and how she made the most of her time here. On her face was the roadmap of those memories.

Earlier today, for no reason in particular, I thought about Diane Keaton. I don’t know why, but she popped into my mind. I thought I hadn’t heard from her and wondered how things were going. She’d been absent long enough that I’d begun to wonder. It was still shocking to hear she had died. She was such a bright light. A class act. She will be missed.