Diane Keaton, the Academy Award-winning American actress who brought her disarming, genuine style to comedy and drama across generations and became a fashion inspiration, has died at 79. Her death was confirmed by a spokesperson, with no cause yet given.
Keaton was a quicksilver performer who was compared to classic Hollywood greats such as Carole Lombard, yet deeply attuned to vital feminist issues around romance, career, and personal independence. Her Oscar-winning 1977 performance in Woody Allen’s Annie Hall was a funny and poignant portrait of a young woman finding herself between lovers, and she put no less verve into the part of a successful divorced playwright in Nancy Meyers’ 2003 hit Something’s Gotta Give. Keaton’s unassuming persona could belie her depth and range, from playing steely activist Louise Bryant in Reds (1981) to writing best-selling memoirs about her family.
Diane Hall was born in Los Angeles on January 5, 1946, to Dorothy, a housewife, and Jack Hall, a civil engineer who worked at the Department of Water and Power. She later consistently paid tribute to her mother, a fellow creative spirit who was crowned Mrs Los Angeles and filled 85 journals of memoirs. Keaton herself gravitated to performance and moved to New York to study the Meisner Technique at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre. After her first major stage role in the Broadway musical Hair, in 1968, her film debut came in Lovers and Other Strangers (1970), which caught the eye of Francis Ford Coppola, who was casting The Godfather (1972).