Starting with Annie Hall to the movie Something’s Gotta Give: Diane Keaton Emerged as the Definitive Comedy Queen.

Plenty of accomplished female actors have appeared in love stories with humor. Typically, should they desire to earn an Academy Award, they must turn for more serious roles. The late Diane Keaton, whose recent passing occurred, charted a different course and executed it with disarmingly natural. Her debut significant performance was in the classic The Godfather, as weighty an film classic as ever produced. But that same year, she reprised the part of the character 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 throughout the ’70s, and it was the latter that earned her the Academy Award for outstanding actress, changing the genre permanently.

The Award-Winning Performance

That Oscar was for Annie Hall, written and directed by Woody Allen, with Keaton in the lead role, part of the film’s broken romance. Allen and Keaton were once romantically involved prior to filming, and remained close friends until her passing; when speaking publicly, Keaton described Annie as a perfect image of herself, through Allen’s eyes. It would be easy, then, to assume Keaton’s performance involves doing what came naturally. But there’s too much range in her acting, from her Godfather role and her funny films with Allen and within Annie Hall itself, to discount her skill with romantic comedy as merely exuding appeal – though she was, of course, tremendously charming.

Evolving Comedy

The film famously functioned as Allen’s shift between more gag-based broad comedies and a authentic manner. Consequently, it has plenty of gags, dreamlike moments, and a freewheeling patchwork of a relationship memoir in between some stinging insights into a ill-fated romance. In a similar vein, Diane, led an evolution in Hollywood love stories, embodying neither the fast-talking screwball type or the bombshell ditz famous from the ’50s. Instead, she mixes and matches elements from each to forge a fresh approach that still reads as oddly contemporary, halting her assertiveness with uncertain moments.

Observe, for instance the scene where Annie and Alvy Singer first connect after a tennis game, fumbling over ping-ponging invitations for a ride (although only one of them has a car). The dialogue is quick, but meanders unexpectedly, with Keaton soloing around her unease before ending up stuck of that famous phrase, a expression that captures her nervous whimsy. The film manifests that sensibility in the next scene, as she has indifferent conversation while operating the car carelessly through New York roads. Later, she centers herself singing It Had to Be You in a club venue.

Complexity and Freedom

This is not evidence of Annie being unstable. Throughout the movie, there’s a complexity to her gentle eccentricity – her hippie-hangover willingness to experiment with substances, her fear of crustaceans and arachnids, her resistance to control by Alvy’s efforts to shape her into someone apparently somber (which for him means focused on dying). Initially, the character may look like an strange pick to receive acclaim; she’s the romantic lead in a movie seen from a man’s point of view, and the protagonists’ trajectory doesn’t bend toward sufficient transformation to make it work. But Annie evolves, in manners visible and hidden. She merely avoids becoming a more compatible mate for her co-star. Plenty of later rom-coms stole the superficial stuff – neurotic hang-ups, quirky fashions – without quite emulating her core self-reliance.

Ongoing Legacy and Senior Characters

Maybe Keaton was wary of that trend. Following her collaboration with Allen ended, she paused her lighthearted roles; the film Baby Boom is really her only one from the complete 1980s period. But during her absence, the film Annie Hall, the persona even more than the unconventional story, emerged as a template for the style. Star Meg Ryan, for example, credits much of her love story success to Keaton’s skill to embody brains and whimsy at once. This cast Keaton as like a everlasting comedy royalty even as she was actually playing more wives (if contentedly, as in that family comedy, or less so, as in that ensemble comedy) and/or mothers (see The Family Stone or that mother-daughter story) than unattached women finding romance. Even during her return with Allen, they’re a established married pair drawn nearer by humorous investigations – and she slips into that role easily, beautifully.

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 younger-dating cad (Jack Nicholson, naturally). The outcome? Her last Academy Award nod, and a complete niche of romantic tales where mature females (typically acted by celebrities, but still!) reassert their romantic and/or social agency. One factor her passing feels so sudden is that Keaton was still making those movies just last year, a constant multiplex presence. Now audiences will be pivoting from expecting her roles 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 probably because it’s rare for a performer of her caliber to dedicate herself to a genre that’s often just online content for a while now.

A Unique Legacy

Reflect: there are 10 living female actors who earned several Oscar nods. It’s unusual for a single part to begin in a rom-com, especially not several, as was the situation with Diane. {Because her