From the film Annie Hall to Something’s Gotta Give: Diane Keaton Emerged as the Definitive Rom-Com Royalty.

Plenty of accomplished performers have performed in romantic comedies. Ordinarily, when aiming to receive Oscar recognition, they must turn for dramatic parts. The late Diane Keaton, who died unexpectedly, charted a different course and made it look seamless ease. Her debut significant performance was in the classic The Godfather, about as serious an American masterpiece as ever created. But that same year, she returned to the role of Linda, the love interest of a geeky protagonist, in a film adaptation of the theatrical production Play It Again, Sam. She regularly juggled intense dramas with romantic comedies during the 1970s, and the lighter fare that won her an Oscar for leading actress, altering the genre for good.

The Award-Winning Performance

The Oscar statuette was for the film Annie Hall, written and directed by Woody Allen, with Keaton in the lead role, part of the film’s broken romance. Woody and Diane had been in a romantic relationship before making the film, and stayed good friends throughout her life; during conversations, Keaton had characterized Annie as a perfect image of herself, from Allen’s perspective. It would be easy, then, to assume Keaton’s performance meant being herself. However, her versatility in her acting, both between her Godfather performance and her Allen comedies and inside Annie Hall alone, to discount her skill with funny romances as simply turning on the charm – even if she was, of course, highly charismatic.

Shifting Genres

Annie Hall famously served as the director’s evolution between more gag-based broad comedies and a more naturalistic style. As such, it has numerous jokes, imaginative scenes, and a freewheeling patchwork of a romantic memory mixed with painful truths into a doomed romantic relationship. In a similar vein, Diane, oversaw a change in American rom-coms, portraying neither the rapid-fire comic lead or the glamorous airhead famous from the ’50s. Instead, she mixes and matches aspects of both to forge a fresh approach that feels modern even now, cutting her confidence short with nervous pauses.

Watch, for example the scene where Annie and Alvy Singer first connect after a match of tennis, fumbling over ping-ponging invitations for a lift (despite the fact that only a single one owns a vehicle). The dialogue is quick, but meanders unexpectedly, with Keaton maneuvering through her nervousness before winding up in a cul-de-sac of “la di da”, a phrase that encapsulates her nervous whimsy. The movie physicalizes that feeling in the next scene, as she makes blasé small talk while navigating wildly through city avenues. Later, she finds her footing performing the song in a cabaret.

Depth and Autonomy

These are not instances of Annie being unstable. Across the film, there’s a depth to her gentle eccentricity – her post-hippie openness to sample narcotics, her anxiety about sea creatures and insects, her refusal to be manipulated by the protagonist’s tries to turn her into someone more superficially serious (which for him means death-obsessed). At first, Annie might seem like an odd character to earn an award; she plays the female lead in a movie seen from a man’s point of view, and the protagonists’ trajectory doesn’t lead to either changing enough to make it work. Yet Annie does change, in manners visible and hidden. She just doesn’t become a more compatible mate for the male lead. Many subsequent love stories took the obvious elements – nervous habits, quirky fashions – not fully copying her core self-reliance.

Lasting Influence and Later Roles

Perhaps Keaton felt cautious of that pattern. After her working relationship with Allen concluded, she took a break from rom-coms; Baby Boom is essentially her sole entry from the entirety of the 1980s. But during her absence, the character Annie, the character perhaps moreso than the free-form film, became a model for the style. Star Meg Ryan, for example, is largely indebted for her comedic roles to Keaton’s ability to portray intelligence and flightiness together. This made Keaton seem like a permanent rom-com queen despite her real roles being married characters (be it joyfully, as in the movie Father of the Bride, or more strained, as in The First Wives Club) and/or moms (see the holiday film The Family Stone or the comedy Because I Said So) than unattached women finding romance. Even in her reunion with Woody Allen, they’re a seasoned spouses united more deeply by funny detective work – and she fits the character smoothly, wonderfully.

However, Keaton also enjoyed an additional romantic comedy success in two thousand three with the film Something’s Gotta Give, as a playwright in love with a younger-dating cad (Jack Nicholson, naturally). The outcome? One more Oscar recognition, and a complete niche of love stories where mature females (often portrayed by famous faces, but still!) reassert their romantic and/or social agency. A key element her death seems like such a shock is that Diane continued creating these stories just last year, a frequent big-screen star. Now audiences will be pivoting from assuming her availability to understanding the huge impact she was on the romantic comedy as we know it. If it’s harder to think of present-day versions of those earlier stars who emulate her path, that’s likely since it’s rare for a performer of Keaton’s skill to dedicate herself to a style that’s frequently reduced to digital fare for a recent period.

A Unique Legacy

Consider: there are a dozen performing women who have been nominated multiple times. 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