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Numerous accomplished performers have starred in rom-coms. Ordinarily, if they want to earn an Academy Award, they need to shift for dramatic parts. The late Diane Keaton, who passed away recently, followed a reverse trajectory and pulled it off with disarmingly natural. Her first major film role was in The Godfather, about as serious an film classic as ever created. But that same year, she reprised the part of Linda, the object of a nerdy hero’s affection, in a film adaptation of the theatrical production Play It Again, Sam. She continued to alternate heavy films with lighthearted romances across the seventies, and the lighter fare that secured her the Oscar for leading actress, changing the genre permanently.

The Award-Winning Performance

The award was for the film Annie Hall, co-written and directed by Allen, with Keaton as the title character, a component of the couple’s failed relationship. Woody and Diane were once romantically involved before production, and continued as pals for the rest of her life; during conversations, Keaton described Annie as a dream iteration of herself, as seen by Allen. It would be easy, then, to assume Keaton’s performance meant being herself. Yet her breadth in her acting, from her Godfather role and her Allen comedies and throughout that very movie, to underestimate her talent with funny romances as simply turning on the charm – although she remained, of course, highly charismatic.

Evolving Comedy

Annie Hall famously served as the director’s evolution between slapstick-oriented movies and a more naturalistic style. Consequently, it has plenty of gags, fantasy sequences, and a improvised tapestry of a relationship memoir alongside sharp observations into a ill-fated romance. In a similar vein, Diane, led an evolution in Hollywood love stories, portraying neither the screwball-era speed-talker or the glamorous airhead famous from the ’50s. On the contrary, she fuses and merges elements from each to create something entirely new that seems current today, cutting her confidence short with uncertain moments.

See, as an example the scene where Annie and Alvy Singer first connect after a match of tennis, fumbling over ping-ponging invitations for a ride (even though only just one drives). The dialogue is quick, but meanders unexpectedly, with Keaton navigating her nervousness before ending up stuck of “la di da”, a expression that captures her nervous whimsy. The story embodies that sensibility in the next scene, as she has indifferent conversation while operating the car carelessly through New York roads. Later, she centers herself performing the song in a cabaret.

Dimensionality and Independence

This is not evidence of Annie acting erratic. During the entire story, there’s a dimensionality to her light zaniness – her lingering counterculture curiosity to sample narcotics, her fear of crustaceans and arachnids, her unwillingness to be shaped by the protagonist’s tries to mold her into someone apparently somber (for him, that implies death-obsessed). At first, Annie could appear like an odd character to receive acclaim; she’s the romantic lead in a story filtered through a man’s eyes, and the protagonists’ trajectory doesn’t lead to adequate growth accommodate the other. But Annie evolves, in aspects clear and mysterious. She merely avoids becoming a more compatible mate for the male lead. Many subsequent love stories took the obvious elements – anxious quirks, quirky fashions – without quite emulating Annie’s ultimate independence.

Lasting Influence and Later Roles

Possibly she grew hesitant of that trend. Post her professional partnership with Allen ended, she paused her lighthearted roles; Baby Boom is essentially her sole entry from the entirety of the 1980s. Yet while she was gone, the character Annie, the role possibly more than the loosely structured movie, emerged as a template for the category. Meg Ryan, for example, credits much of her love story success to Keaton’s ability to portray intelligence and flightiness together. This rendered Keaton like a timeless love story icon while she was in fact portraying more wives (whether happily, as in that family comedy, or less so, as in The First Wives Club) and/or moms (see The Family Stone or Because I Said So) than independent ladies in love. Even during her return with Woody Allen, they’re a long-married couple brought closer together by comic amateur sleuthing – and she slips into that role effortlessly, gracefully.

However, Keaton also enjoyed an additional romantic comedy success in the year 2003 with Something’s Gotta Give, as a playwright in love with a younger-dating cad (Jack Nicholson, naturally). What happened? Her last Academy Award nod, and a complete niche of romantic tales where older women (typically acted by celebrities, but still!) reassert their romantic and/or social agency. One factor her death seems like such a shock is that Keaton was still making these stories just last year, a regular cinema fixture. Now audiences will be pivoting from taking that presence for granted to grasping the significant effect she was on the rom-com genre as it exists today. Should it be difficult to recall present-day versions of those earlier stars who emulate her path, the reason may be it’s uncommon for an actor of her talent to commit herself to a style that’s mostly been streaming fodder for a while now.

An Exceptional Impact

Consider: there are 10 living female actors who have been nominated multiple times. It’s unusual for a single part to start in a light love story, let alone half of them, as was the example of Keaton. {Because her