Diane Keaton, the Oscar-winning star of “Annie Hall,” “The Godfather” films and “Father of the Bride,” whose quirky, vibrant manner and depth made her one of the most singular actors of a generation, has died. She was 79.
Dexter Keaton White, Keaton’s daughter, confirmed her mother’s death, according to NBC News. “We are looking for privacy right now. No further comment,” she said.
People Magazine first reported Saturday that Keaton had died in California surrounded by loved ones.
The unexpected news was met with shock around the world. Keaton was the kind of actor who helped make films iconic and timeless, from her “La-dee-da, la-dee-da” phrasing as Annie Hall, bedecked in that necktie, bowler hat, vest and khakis, to her heartbreaking turn as Kay Adams, the woman unfortunate enough to join the Corleone family.
Her star-making performances in the 1970s, many of which were in Woody Allen films, were not a flash in the pan either, and she would continue to charm new generations for decades thanks in part to a longstanding collaboration with filmmaker Nancy Meyers.
She played a businessperson who unexpectedly inherits an infant in “Baby Boom,” the mother of the bride in the beloved remake of “Father of the Bride,” a newly single woman in “First Wives Club,” and a divorced playwright who gets involved with Jack Nicholson’s music executive in “Something’s Gotta Give.”
Keaton won her first Oscar for “Annie Hall” and would go on to be nominated three more times, for “Reds,” “Marvin’s Room” and “Something’s Gotta Give.”
In her very Keaton way, upon accepting her Oscar in 1978, she laughed and said, “This is something.”
Keaton was born Diane Hall in January 1946 in Los Angeles, though her family was not part of the film industry, she would find herself in it. Her mother was a homemaker and photographer, and her father was in real estate and civil engineering.
Keaton was drawn to theater and singing while in school in Santa Ana, Calif., and she dropped out of college after a year to make a go of it in Manhattan. Actors’ Equity already had a Diane Hall in their ranks, and she took Keaton, her mother’s maiden name, as her own.
She studied under Sanford Meisner in New York and has credited him with giving her the freedom to “chart the complex terrain of human behavior within the safety of his guidance. It made playing with fire fun.”
“More than anything, Sanford Meisner helped me learn to appreciate the darker side of behavior,” she wrote in her 2012 memoir, “Then Again.” “I always had a knack for sensing it but not yet the courage to delve into such dangerous, illuminating territory.”
She started on the stage as an understudy in the Broadway production of “Hair,” and in Allen’s “Play It Again, Sam” in 1968, for which she would receive a Tony nomination.
Keaton made her film debut in the 1970 romantic comedy “Lovers and Other Strangers,” but her big breakthrough would come a few years later when she was cast in Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Godfather,” which won best picture and became one of the most beloved films of all time. And yet even she hesitated to return for the sequel, though after reading the script she decided otherwise.
The 1970s were an incredibly fruitful time for Keaton thanks in part to her ongoing collaboration with Allen in both comedic and dramatic roles. She appeared in “Sleeper,” “Love and Death,” “Interiors,” Manhattan,” “Manhattan Murder Mystery” and the film version of “Play it Again, Sam.”
Allen and the late Marshall Brickman gave Keaton one of her most iconic roles in “Annie Hall,” the infectious woman from Chippewa Falls whom Alvy Singer (played by Allen) cannot get over. The film is considered one of the great romantic comedies of all time, with Keaton’s eccentric, self-deprecating Annie at its heart.