Diane Keaton, the Oscar-winning actress known for a prolific career in uplifting comedies, a quirky sense of fashion, and a penchant for drinking red wine with ice cubes, has died at the age of 79.
A family spokesperson confirmed the actress’ death in California to People; no other details were provided, and the family has asked for privacy at this time.
Keaton, born and raised in Los Angeles, got her start acting and singing at Santa Ana High School, where she starred as Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire. After studying acting at Neighborhood Playhouse in New York City, Keaton was cast as the understudy for the character of Sheila in the original Broadway production of Hair in 1968. The following year, she starred in Woody Allen’s comedic stage play Play it Again, Sam, which earned her a Tony Award nomination for a Best Featured Actress in a Play.
Keaton went on to appear in several films, including Lovers and Other Strangers, which marked her onscreen debut. Francis Ford Coppola noticed her performance in the film and cast her in his 1972 Oscar-winning film The Godfather as Kay Adams, the girlfriend and eventual wife of Michael Corleone, played by Al Pacino.
In 2023, Coppola finally explained what attracted him to Keaton, responding to a query from the actress herself. “I chose you, because although you were to play the more straight/vanilla wife, there was something more about you, deeper, funnier, and very interesting,” he said, adding, “I was right.”
Keaton reprised the role in The Godfather Part II, but shifted away from drama when she began regularly collaborating with Allen throughout the 1970s in films like Sleeper, Love and Death, Interiors, Manhattan, and a film adaptation of Play It Again, Sam. In 1977, Keaton embodied the self-deprecating, tomboyish eponymous role in Allen’s Annie Hall, which he wrote loosely based on her. The film was a box office hit and earned Keaton the Oscar for Best Actress. She also won the BAFTA, Golden Globe, and several critics circle awards for the role.
“I think that being an actor in any case, you lay yourself on the line,” Keaton told Rolling Stone that year about her work in Annie Hall. “Now, this seems more personal, but everything is personal. I’m for it, and I also have my conflicts about it. I’m very involved in expressing myself. Hopefully, I’m not a fool for doing it. Hopefully, there’s some merit in it. Even if it’s just amusing, that’s OK.”
Love Music?
Get your daily dose of everything happening in Australian/New Zealand music and globally.
In the 1980s, Keaton appeared opposite Warren Beatty in Reds (which earned the actress her second Oscar nomination), starred alongside Jessica Lange and Sissy Spacek in Crimes of the Heart, and joined Albert Finney in Shoot the Moon. In 1987, she directed and edited her first feature film, Heaven, a documentary that considered the possibility of an afterlife. That same year, the actress starred in Baby Boom, her first of many collaborations with writer Nancy Meyers, whose heartwarming romantic comedies were an ideal vehicle for Keaton’s comedic talents. Keaton subsequently worked with Meyers on Father of the Bride, Something’s Gotta Give (another Oscar nod), and Because I Said So.
Father of the Bride, released in 1991, was a breakout hit, and Keaton returned as Nina Banks in 1995’s Father of the Bride Part II. The actress cemented herself even more firmly in the zeitgeist the following year, when she starred as a vengeful divorcée in The First Wives Club. Rolling Stone critic Peter Travers called Keaton and her co-stars, Goldie Hawn and Bette Midler, “a comedy dream team.” The film also offered Keaton an opportunity to showcase her underappreciated vocal talents as the cast performed Lesley Gore’s “You Don’t Own Me” for the closing credits and soundtrack.
Keaton became the go-to actress for family matriarchs and long-suffering wives in the years that followed, with memorable performances in The Other Sister, The Family Stone, and Town & Country. She rarely worked in TV, but embodied famous pilot Amelia Earhart in Amelia Earhart: The Final Flight in 1994. The role earned her nods at the Emmys and SAG Awards. Keaton had a preference for uplifting films, often leaning towards romantic comedies or movies about female friends with an optimistic viewpoint. As an actress, Keaton brought a sense of vivacious, charmingly awkward fun to her work.
“At the beginning of my career, I was so panicked — it was too overwhelming,” she once told Interview. “It was really frightening, but I got through it. When I started doing the films with Woody [Allen], I got much more relaxed. It was fun because it was looser, and comedy played a part. I feel more comfortable with comedy. I love being awkward or falling in love and laughing, or touching someone’s face and enjoying it. I love the fun that you have when you’re in a comic movie.”
Keaton also moved behind the camera beginning in the late Eighties, first serving as director on the music video for Belinda Carlisle’s “Heaven Is a Place on Earth.” Following her 1987 documentary Heaven, Keaton delivered her feature film directorial debut with 1995’s Unstrung Heroes. Keaton would also direct (and star in) 2000’s Hanging Up, as well as helm a Season Two episode of Twin Peaks.
More recently, Keaton saw success with Book Club, an unexpected hit that featured her, Jane Fonda, Candice Bergen, and Mary Steenburgen as four friends who read Fifty Shades of Grey as part of their monthly book club. The actresses reunited in 2023 for Book Club: The Next Chapter, reminding audiences — and Hollywood studio executives — that there is a market for films about women over 60. Keaton did extensive press for the sequel, often described by journalists as lively, friendly, and more interested in asking them questions than in speaking about herself. The quartet teamed up for an inspirational anthem “Anywhere With You,” which Steenburgen said was an homage to her life-changing friendships with her co-stars.
She maintained a prolific filmography well into her seventies, famously saying that she wasn’t interested in fading away just because she was aging. “I never understood the idea that you’re supposed to mellow as you get older,” Keaton told AARP in 2012. “Slowing down isn’t something I relate to at all. The goal is to continue in good and bad, all of it. To continue to express myself, particularly. To feel the world. To explore. To be with people. To take things far. To risk. To love. I just want to know more and see more. The best part is that I’m still here and, because the end is in sight, I treasure it all more.’
Outside of film, Keaton was a passionate, curious photographer who once captured images of old hotels in California for Rolling Stone in the 1970s. The photographs became part of her first book, Reservations, published in 1980. Keaton built a vast real estate portfolio and spent decades flipping properties that included Lloyd Wright’s historic Samuel-Novarro house. One of her famous clients was Madonna, who purchased a $6.5 million Beverly Hills mansion from Keaton in 2003. She became a self-styled fashion icon, instantly recognizable for her menswear-inspired looks and neat, undyed hair cut. In 2023, she headlined a J. Crew campaign for the brand’s fortieth anniversary, which celebrated timeless style. In 2015, Keaton launched The Keaton, an affordable red wine blend intended to be served over ice — just the way she always drank it. “It’s not fancy,” she said of the wine. “But neither am I.”
Over her career, Keaton authored several more books, with her first memoir, Then Again, arriving in 2011. She penned Let’s Just Say It Wasn’t Pretty, a collection of wisdom and advice, in 2014. In the book, Keaton reflected on modern standards of beauty, pondering the societal obsession with how things look.
“Why do we try to pin it down by categorizing it as absolute?” she wrote of beauty. “Why limit it at all? Why is classic beauty the gold standard? Why is gold the gold standard? And what is ‘classic?‘ What’s precious about precious stones? Why are diamonds a girl’s best friend? Don’t tell me what beauty is before I know it for myself.”
Keaton’s vibrant personality was as memorable as her professional work. She was notably self-effacing, once telling director Rob Reiner, “I don’t act, I am just who I am.” Although Keaton starred in dozens of films over her career, she refused to be pigeonholed or to follow a prescribed path, as evidenced by her collaboration with Justin Bieber for his 2021 “Ghost” music video. In the Colin Tilley-directed clip, Keaton played a grandmother who is encouraged to date again after the death of her husband. “Am I dreaming???” Keaton wrote of the video on her heavily-used Instagram page. “What an honor it was to work with Justin Bieber and his incredible team.”
Keaton, who was nominated for four Oscars in total, was frequently feted for her performances. She compelled her fellow actors and directors with her one-of-a-kind persona. In 2017, the American Film Institute honored her with the Lifetime Achievement Award. During the ceremony, Beatty enthused over his co-star and onetime flame, calling her “brilliant, beautiful, passionate, authentic.”
“If you are lucky enough to cast Diane, you realize very quickly the truth in that old axiom that character is plot,” Beatty said. “Well, casting is character. Diane Keaton is a plot. She is an unpredictable, mysterious, suspenseful, constantly surprising, sometimes comedic, sometimes tragic, always engaging plot. The woman is a story.”
From Rolling Stone US
