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Many accomplished actresses have starred in rom-coms. Typically, should they desire to win an Oscar, they have to reach for weightier characters. The late Diane Keaton, whose recent passing occurred, charted a different course and made it look effortless grace. Her first major film role was in The Godfather, as dramatic an film classic as ever created. However, concurrently, she revisited the character of Linda, the focus of an awkward lead’s admiration, in a film adaptation of Broadway’s Play It Again, Sam. She regularly juggled heavy films with romantic comedies during the 1970s, and it was the latter that won her an Oscar for best actress, changing the genre permanently.

The Oscar-Winning Role

The Oscar statuette was for Annie Hall, written and directed by Woody Allen, with Keaton in the lead role, a component of the couple’s failed relationship. The director and star dated previously before making the film, and stayed good friends until her passing; in interviews, Keaton portrayed Annie as a dream iteration of herself, as seen by Allen. It might be simple, then, to assume Keaton’s performance involves doing what came naturally. But there’s too much range in her performances, contrasting her dramatic part and her comedic collaborations and inside Annie Hall alone, to discount her skill with rom-coms as merely exuding appeal – even if she was, of course, incredibly appealing.

Evolving Comedy

Annie Hall famously served as Allen’s shift between slapstick-oriented movies and a more naturalistic style. Consequently, it has plenty of gags, fantasy sequences, and a improvised tapestry of a love story recollection alongside sharp observations into a doomed romantic relationship. Keaton, similarly, led an evolution in Hollywood love stories, portraying neither the rapid-fire comic lead or the sexy scatterbrain popularized in the 1950s. Instead, she blends and combines elements from each to create something entirely new that feels modern even now, cutting her confidence short with uncertain moments.

Watch, for example the scene where Annie and Alvy Singer initially hit it off after a tennis game, stumbling through reciprocal offers for a car trip (even though only one of them has a car). The banter is fast, but veers erratically, with Keaton navigating her own discomfort before concluding with of her whimsical line, a phrase that encapsulates her anxious charm. The story embodies that feeling in the following sequence, as she makes blasé small talk while driving recklessly through city avenues. Afterward, she centers herself performing the song in a club venue.

Dimensionality and Independence

These aren’t examples of Annie acting erratic. Throughout the movie, there’s a complexity to her light zaniness – her post-hippie openness to try drugs, her panic over lobsters and spiders, her resistance to control by Alvy’s attempts to shape her into someone apparently somber (for him, that implies focused on dying). Initially, Annie might seem like an unusual choice to receive acclaim; she is the love interest in a film told from a male perspective, and the protagonists’ trajectory doesn’t bend toward either changing enough to make it work. However, she transforms, in ways both observable and unknowable. She just doesn’t become a more suitable partner for Alvy. Numerous follow-up films borrowed the surface traits – anxious quirks, odd clothing – without quite emulating Annie’s ultimate independence.

Lasting Influence and Later Roles

Maybe Keaton was wary of that tendency. Following her collaboration with Allen ended, she stepped away from romantic comedies; the film Baby Boom is essentially her sole entry from the complete 1980s period. Yet while she was gone, the character Annie, the role possibly more than the free-form film, emerged as a template for the genre. Star Meg Ryan, for example, credits much of her love story success to Keaton’s ability to portray intelligence and flightiness together. This made Keaton seem like a timeless love story icon even as she was actually playing more wives (whether happily, as in Father of the Bride, or more strained, as in that ensemble comedy) and/or moms (see the holiday film The Family Stone or the comedy Because I Said So) than single gals falling in love. Even in her reunion with the director, they’re a established married pair united more deeply by humorous investigations – and she eases into the part smoothly, wonderfully.

But Keaton did have a further love story triumph in the year 2003 with the film Something’s Gotta Give, as a playwright in love with a man who dates younger women (Jack Nicholson, naturally). The result? One more Oscar recognition, 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 Diane continued creating these stories up until recently, a regular cinema fixture. Now fans are turning from taking that presence for granted to realizing what an enormous influence she was on the romantic comedy as it is recognized. Is it tough to imagine modern equivalents of Meg Ryan or Goldie Hawn who similarly follow in Keaton’s footsteps, that’s likely since it’s uncommon for an actor of Keaton’s skill to commit herself to a style that’s mostly been streaming fodder for a long time.

A Special Contribution

Reflect: there are 10 living female actors who have been nominated multiple times. It’s rare for one of those roles to start in a light love story, let alone half of them, as was the case for Keaton. {Because her