From the film Annie Hall to Something’s Gotta Give: the actress Diane Keaton Emerged as the Quintessential Comedy Queen.

Many accomplished actresses have starred in rom-coms. Typically, if they want to earn an Academy Award, they must turn for weightier characters. The late Diane Keaton, whose recent passing occurred, followed a reverse trajectory and executed it with effortless grace. Her debut significant performance was in The Godfather, as dramatic an American masterpiece as ever created. Yet in the same year, she reprised the part of Linda, the focus of an awkward lead’s admiration, in a cinematic take of the stage play Play It Again, Sam. She persistently switched intense dramas with romantic comedies during the 1970s, and the comedies that secured her the Oscar for outstanding actress, changing the genre permanently.

The Award-Winning Performance

That Oscar was for the film Annie Hall, co-written and directed by Allen, with Keaton as the title character, a component of the couple’s failed relationship. Allen and Keaton were once romantically involved before production, and remained close friends throughout her life; when speaking publicly, Keaton had characterized Annie as a dream iteration of herself, through Allen’s eyes. It would be easy, then, to assume Keaton’s performance required little effort. However, her versatility in her performances, from her Godfather role and her Allen comedies and inside Annie Hall alone, to discount her skill with romantic comedy as simply turning on the charm – though she was, of course, incredibly appealing.

A Transition in Style

Annie Hall notably acted as Allen’s shift between slapstick-oriented movies and a realistic approach. As such, it has numerous jokes, dreamlike moments, and a improvised tapestry of a love story recollection in between some stinging insights into a ill-fated romance. Keaton, similarly, oversaw a change in U.S. romantic comedies, playing neither the rapid-fire comic lead or the glamorous airhead famous from the ’50s. Rather, she blends and combines elements from each to forge a fresh approach that seems current today, halting her assertiveness with her own false-start hesitations.

Observe, for instance the sequence with the couple initially hit it off after a game on the courts, awkwardly exchanging proposals for a car trip (although only a single one owns a vehicle). The banter is fast, but meanders unexpectedly, with Keaton maneuvering through her own discomfort before concluding with of “la di da”, a phrase that encapsulates her anxious charm. The film manifests that feeling in the next scene, as she makes blasé small talk while driving recklessly through Manhattan streets. Later, she finds her footing singing It Had to Be You in a club venue.

Complexity and Freedom

This is not evidence of Annie acting erratic. Across the film, there’s a depth to her gentle eccentricity – her hippie-hangover willingness to sample narcotics, her fear of crustaceans and arachnids, her unwillingness to be shaped by Alvy’s attempts to mold her into someone more superficially serious (in his view, that signifies death-obsessed). At first, the character may look like an strange pick to win an Oscar; she is the love interest in a movie seen from a man’s point of view, and the protagonists’ trajectory doesn’t bend toward either changing enough accommodate the other. But Annie evolves, in aspects clear and mysterious. She simply fails to turn into a better match for her co-star. Plenty of later rom-coms borrowed the surface traits – neurotic hang-ups, eccentric styles – not fully copying her final autonomy.

Ongoing Legacy and Senior Characters

Perhaps Keaton felt cautious of that pattern. After her working relationship with Allen ended, she took a break from rom-coms; the film Baby Boom is really her only one from the entirety of the 1980s. But during her absence, the character Annie, the role possibly more than the unconventional story, served as a blueprint for the style. Meg Ryan, for example, is largely indebted for her comedic roles to Diane’s talent to embody brains and whimsy at once. This cast Keaton as like a timeless love story icon even as she was actually playing married characters (whether happily, as in Father of the Bride, or less so, as in that ensemble comedy) and/or moms (see The Family Stone or the comedy Because I Said So) than independent ladies in love. Even in her reunion with Allen, they’re a seasoned spouses drawn nearer by comic amateur sleuthing – and she eases into the part smoothly, wonderfully.

Yet Diane experienced an additional romantic comedy success in the year 2003 with the film Something’s Gotta Give, as a dramatist in love with a older playboy (actor Jack Nicholson, naturally). The result? One more Oscar recognition, and a complete niche of love stories where senior actresses (typically acted by celebrities, but still!) take charge of their destinies. One factor her death seems like such a shock is that Diane continued creating these stories just last year, a constant multiplex presence. Today viewers must shift from taking that presence for granted to grasping the significant effect she was on the romantic comedy as it is recognized. Is it tough to imagine modern equivalents of such actresses who emulate her path, the reason may be it’s uncommon for an actor of her caliber to devote herself to a style that’s often just online content for a long time.

A Unique Legacy

Consider: there are a dozen performing women who earned several Oscar nods. It’s unusual for a single part to originate in a romantic comedy, not to mention multiple, as was the example of Keaton. {Because her