Mastering genres: Diane Keaton’s guide to great filmography

• In the chilling final scene of Francis Ford Coppola’s 1972 masterpiece, The Godfather, the door to Michael Corleone’s office is closed in the face of his wife, Kay. It simultaneously signified the opening of many more doors for the career of actor Diane Keaton.

In that film, so heavily dominated by male actors, Keaton more than holds her own. For someone who would become known for her daffy, comic style, it showed us she also had serious, dramatic acting chops.

The multi-award-winning actor, producer and director has died at the age of 79. She leaves behind a legacy of memorable roles in films that include classics such as The Godfather and Annie Hall, spanning genres from comedy to drama.

Keaton started life in Los Angeles as Diane Hall on January 5, 1946. Her career began as a teenage Blanche in Santa Ana High School’s production of A Streetcar

Named Desire. She began drama studies at nearby Santa Ana College but soon dropped out, took her mother’s maiden name – Keaton – and travelled to New York to study at the Neighbourhood Playhouse.

In 1968, after a stint in summer stock, she was cast as an understudy in

Hair on Broadway. She was 19 and famously refused to do the nude scene.

“It wasn’t for any sort of philosophical reason. It was just that I was too scared,” she told the NYT in 1972.

Her heart was set on the big screen, which, of course, meant starting out on the small screen in shows like The FBI and

Night Gallery. Instead, it was theatre that led to her breakout screen roles.

In 2023, Francis Ford Coppola revealed to The Hollywood Reporter that he had seen Keaton in Hair.

He later told Keaton he cast her in The Godfather because, “although you were to play the more straight/vanilla wife, there was something more about you, deeper, funnier, and very interesting. (I was right).”

Then she auditioned for a new theatrical comedy, Play It Again, Sam, by upand-coming comedian Woody Allen. This led to significant collaboration in eight films, including the 1977 hit Annie Hall. For that role, Keaton won the Oscar for best actress. And her costume made her a fashion icon of the 70s. She also gave us the whimsical phrase, “la di dah”. For the next five decades, Keaton would become a Hollywood force.

She starred in The First Wives Club (1996), Something’s Gotta Give (2003), the Father of the Bride franchise, Looking for Mister Goodbar (1977), Reds (1981), The Little Drummer Girl (1984), Crimes of the Heart (1986), Marvin’s Room (1996) and two more Godfather films.

Despite much-publicised relationships with Al Pacino, Woody Allen and Warren Beatty, Keaton chose to remain single her whole life. In her 50s, she adopted two children, Dexter and Duke.

Keaton made comedy look easy but told the NYT that “both comedy and drama are equally difficult”. Either way, we were the richer for her creative life and are the poorer for her loss.

The Conversation