Diane Keaton, Oscar-winning star of ‘Annie Hall’, dies at 79

Diane Keaton, the Oscar-winning star of ‘Annie Hall’, ‘The Godfather’ films and ‘Father of the Bride’, whose quirky, vibrant manner and depth made her one of the most singular actors of a generation, has died. She was 79.

People Magazine reported on Saturday that she died in California with loved ones, citing a family spokesperson. No other details were immediately available, and representatives for Keaton did not immediately respond to enquiries from The Associated Press.

The unexpected news was met with shock around the world.

“She was hilarious, a complete original, and completely without guile, or any of the competitiveness one would have expected from such a star. What you saw was who she was…oh, la, la la!,” Bette Midler said in a post on Instagram.

She and Keaton co-starred in ‘The First Wives Club’. Keaton was the kind of actor who helped make films iconic and timeless, from her ‘La-dee-da, la-dee-da’ phrasing as Annie Hall, bedecked in that necktie, bowler hat, vest and khakis, to her heartbreaking turn as Kay Adams, the woman unfortunate enough to join the Corleone family.

Her star-making performances in the 1970s, many of which were in Woody Allen films, were not a flash in the pan either, and she would continue to charm new generations for decades, thanks in part to a longstanding collaboration with filmmaker Nancy Meyers.

She played a businessperson who unexpectedly inherits an infant in ‘Baby Boom’, the mother of the bride in the beloved remake of ‘Father of the Bride’, a newly single woman in ‘The First Wives Club’, and a divorced playwright who gets involved with Jack Nicholson's music executive in ‘Something's Gotta Give’.

Keaton won her first Oscar for ‘Annie Hall’ and would go on to be nominated three more times, for ‘Reds’, playing the journalist and suffragist Louise Bryant, ‘Marvin's Room’, as a caregiver who suddenly needs care herself, and ‘Something's Gotta Give’, as a middle-aged divorcee who is the object of several men's affections.

In her very Keaton way, upon accepting her Oscar in 1978, she laughed and said, “This is something.”

Keaton was born Diane Hall in January 1946 in Los Angeles. Though her family was not part of the film industry, she would find herself in it. Her mother was a homemaker and photographer, and her father was in real estate and civil engineering, and both would inspire her love in the arts, from fashion to architecture.

Keaton was drawn to theatre and singing while in school in Santa Ana, California, and she dropped out of college after a year to make a go of it in Manhattan. Actors' Equity already had a Diane Hall in their ranks, and she took Keaton, her mother's maiden name, as her own.

She studied under Sanford Meisner in New York and has credited him with giving her the freedom to “chart the complex terrain of human behaviour within the safety of his guidance. It made playing with fire fun”.

“More than anything, Sanford Meisner helped me learn to appreciate the darker side of behaviour,” she wrote in her 2012 memoir, ‘Then Again’. “I always had a knack for sensing it but not yet the courage to delve into such dangerous, illuminating territory.”

She started on the stage as an understudy in the Broadway production for ‘Hair’, and in Allen' s ‘Play It Again, Sam’ in 1968, for which she would receive a Tony nomination. And yet she remained deeply self-conscious about her appearance and battled bulimia in her 20s.