Not Diane Keaton
damn it 2025
We lost Diane Keaton somehow. What a travesty. I don’t think any performance in my life has impacted me as much as Diane Keaton’s in the titular role created for her in Annie Hall.
I’m not talking about made me cry or devastated me or anything like that, although Annie does make me cry when she sings “Feels Like Old Times” in the nightclub and also on the street corner at the end.
I don’t think I had ever seen a woman drawn on screen in a way that felt so accessible, so real, so human, until I saw Diane in Annie Hall. She invented the manic pixie dream girl, except she did it so much better than any imitator ever came close to.
Her whimsy and kookiness were not designed to charm men. Her awkwardly self-effacing humor gave Woody Allen’s Alvie a run for his money, and the viewer instantly knew he had scored well outside his league. It only took him the entire movie to admit it to himself.
The section of the film where he goes to visit Annie in California is iconic and hilarious, but it always made me a little sad. That’s when you knew it was over for the ironic, intellectually snobbish New Yorker. Annie still felt lost, but also you always rooted for her to figure it all out for herself. Her chameleon-like abilities, her unapologetically earnest searching for herself, were so bold and winsome to me.
Her unpredictable, fabulous wardrobe (largely inspired by/drawn from Keaton’s own style), was nothing short of revolutionary. Even when I first saw it in the late 80s as a ‘tween I was obsessed. I remember in high school I went through a phase of wearing blouses and trousers and even a bowler hat! I don’t know if I was aping Annie consciously; I think I probably thought I was being terribly original.
The coolest girl in school complimented my outfits daily, saying I looked like a “a lady”, and I leaned in for a bit. Later on I would become obsessed with the perfect turtleneck, and also the orange boilersuit Annie wears when she calls Alvie to come kill the spider. It was so deranged, so adorable, so perfect.
Her eye for tailoring in her real life wardrobe was impeccable. Her insistence on dressing to the beat of her own drum was probably the blueprint for what the kids today call “dopamine dressing”. She knew what she liked and she stuck with it.
I loved her more mature roles as she aged in Father of the Bride (I and II) and The First Wives Club. Her Book Club films with Jane Fonda and Mary Steenburgen are also a fun, gentle watch. A few years ago I watched Looking for Mr, Goodbar and was blown away by how gritty and dark it was. It is probably her most unsung performance, but it is a very disturbing watch. Her understated but emotionally grounded performance as Kay Corleone in The Godfather is also a testament to her versatility, amongst many other dramatic roles of the 70s and early 80s. I have admittedly never seen Reds and a few others so I will be filling in that gap when I can.
Baby Boom is possibly her greatest accomplishment, as the film rests entirely on her charm, and in lesser hands it could have turned out much differently. Her chemistry with Woody Allen and Alan Alda in Manhattan Murder Mystery is a frothy delight, and her tour de force of a rom com Something’s Gotta Give may be my second favorite film of hers.
Seeing Keaton light up the screen as a beautiful leading lady with all of her youthful charm intact in her fifties was magical. I just wish Nancy Myers had been brave enough to have her end up with Keanu!
Her eye for style stretched to architecture and interior design. Her Pinterest a few years back was a particular delight to follow. She published two memoirs and was a lifelong animal lover. She was a mother to two adopted children - she chose to become a mother later in life, never playing by anyone else’s rulebook.
I lived in New York City twice when I was younger. I have always attributed my initial spark of interest, adoration and obsession with the city with the films of Woody Allen and especially Diane Keaton’s Annie Hall. I really wanted to live in that world. Where books and movies were important, where people were unapologetically clever and daring.
Of course after I had lived there I knew it was a rarefied world that didn’t really exist for the majority of people who live there. But I would still take walks at night around the city, peering in the windows of brownstones lined with bookcases, and believe, just a little, that it could be me someday.
Diane Keaton was a Californian, not a New Yorker, for most of her life. Maybe like Annie she held too much hope and light in her to stay in New York for too long.
Not long before I moved back to the city after college I was in a relationship that was destined to fall apart given the distance and other challenges. I wasn’t trying to consciously convey any message, but I showed Annie Hall to my boyfriend who had never seen it one night.
We were still in a fledgling stage of the relationship, but we also kinda knew it was doomed since I was moving away in under a year. I think I wanted to know if he would get my love for the movie.
He did get it; he laughed and became invested. And then the end came. I was surprised at how upset he was. He could not believe that Alvie and Annie didn’t end up together. “That’s it?!” he exclaimed “They don’t get back together?”.
It had not occurred to me that this would bother him as much as it did. He was in a real funk over it that bemused and touched me.
I wasn’t the most sensitive or brightest bulb emotionally back then - kinda like Annie I was in my own world. When the relationship did end I was devastated, and I remembered the parallels. Sometimes two people aren’t going to be together forever, and it’s sad, but it’s also ok, the way it is supposed to work out.
I think Annie Hall was one of the best films to pull this off. It is definitely in the top echelon of doomed love stories along with Casablanca. It never felt heavy to me, maybe because Annie herself gave me so much joy and inspiration.
That’s down to the beautiful light that Diane Keaton brought to this and every other role she portrayed in her life.
May she rest extremely, stylishly well, on a pillow of feather clouds in cashmere turtlenecks, music and love.
Thank you for reminding me of all her great works!!
2025 is giving my tear ducts quite the workout. This was a lovely read.