BY: LBS STAFF
Published 1 hour ago
Diane Keaton has died. She was 79.
PEOPLE can confirm the legendary actress died in California. Further details are not available at this time, and her loved ones have asked for privacy, according to a family spokesperson.
Keaton rose to fame in the 1970s thanks to her role in The Godfather films and her collaborations with director Woody Allen. She won an Oscar for Best Actress for 1977’s Annie Hall. Her long career included movies like The First Wives Club, multiple collaborations with director Nancy Meyers and the Book Club franchise.
The actress was born in Los Angeles in 1946 as Diane Hall, and was the oldest of four children. Her father was a civil engineer, while her mom stayed at home.
Still, Keaton thought her mother dreamed of something bigger. “Secretly in her heart of hearts she probably wanted to be an entertainer of some kind,” the actress told PEOPLE in 2004. “She sang. She played the piano. She was beautiful. She was my advocate.”
Keaton performed in plays in high school, and after graduating in 1964, she pursued drama in college. But she soon dropped out and moved to New York to try to make her way in theater. She took her mother’s maiden name, Keaton, for her professional name, because there was already a Diane Hall registered with Actors’ Equity.
In 1968, Keaton was cast in Broadway’s Hair as the understudy for Sheila. In 2017, Keaton told PEOPLE that she struggled with bulimia during this time after the director of the show told her she needed to lose weight, though she didn’t blame him for her illness. “Believe me, it had to do with an overabundant need for more. Too much. It was a mental illness,” she said.
“I became a master at hiding. Hiding any evidence — how do you make sure no one knows? You live a lifestyle that is very strange. You’re living a lie,” she explained about her illness. She eventually recovered thanks to therapy, but said bulimia also robbed her of the ability to enjoy her time on Broadway.
Next, Keaton starred in Allen’s Broadway show Play It Again, Sam, which premiered in 1969. She received a Tony nomination for the role.
Her film debut was in 1970’s Lovers and Other Strangers, but her big break came when Francis Ford Coppola cast her as Kay Adams, the girlfriend of Al Pacino’s Michael Corleone, in The Godfather, released in 1972. The movie was based on the novel by Mario Puzo but Keaton didn’t read the bestseller before her audition and didn’t really know what the film was about.
“I think the kindest thing that someone’s ever done for me … is that I got cast to be in The Godfather and I didn’t even read it. I didn’t know a single thing,” she told PEOPLE in 2022. “I just was going around auditioning. I think that was amazing for me. And then I had to kind of read the book.”
The film was a massive success and won Best Picture at the Oscars. Keaton reprised her role in 1974’s The Godfather Part II, which was also a triumph and won Best Picture. She returned for 1990’s The Godfather Part III, the last film.
Keaton also continued to collaborate with Allen, appearing in the film version of Play It Again, Sam, released in 1972, 1973’s Sleeper and 1975’s Love and Death. Despite her early success, Keaton’s insecurities still plagued her, and she would never watch her own films. “I just don’t like the way I look and sound,” she told PEOPLE in 1975.
In 1977, Keaton starred in Allen’s Annie Hall as the title character. She won the Oscar for Best Actress for the role. Annie’s wardrobe mimicked Keaton’s own, full of menswear, vests, and structured trousers, and the film cemented the actress’s place as a style icon. Many speculated that the movie was based on Keaton and Allen’s relationship. She told The New York Times in 1977, “It’s not true, but there are elements of truth in it.”
Keaton would collaborate with Allen again in 1978’s Interiors, 1979’s Manhattan and 1993’s Manhattan Murder Mystery. She also defended Allen in the wake of sexual abuse allegations from his stepdaughter Dylan Farrow. “I love him,” she told The Guardian in 2014.
Keaton’s other film roles included 1977’s Looking for Mr. Goodbar, 1981’s Reds, 1982’s Shoot the Moon and 1984’s The Little Drummer Girl. She worked with Meyers for the first time on 1987’s Baby Boom. They would reunite three more times: in 1991’s Father of the Bride, 1995’s Father of the Bride Part II and 2003’s Something’s Gotta Give, which garnered another Oscar nom for Keaton. Asked which of these projects she loved the most, Keaton told Vulture in 2020, “Honestly, you can think it’s sappy, but I love the Father of the Bride movies. They were so touching.
Keaton starred with Goldie Hawn and Bette Midlerin 1996’s The First Wives Club, about three women whose husbands had left them for younger women. The comedy famously ended with all three singing Lesley Gore’s “You Don’t Own Me.” Keaton told The Hollywood Reporter in 2023 that she was “always kind of anxious and a little worried” while filming it because Hawn and Midler were “really amazing actresses.”
Later roles for Keaton included The Family Stone, Because I Said So, Finding Dory, Book Club (and its sequel) and Poms. She made a rare TV appearance with a starring role in HBO’s 2016 miniseries The Young Pope. Keaton also worked as a director, helming the 1987 documentary Heaven, 2000’s Hanging Up and an episode of Twin Peaks.
In 2021 Keaton starred in Justin Bieber’s music video “Ghost.” She also was a prolific Instagramuser, posting updates on her life, reflections on her career and friendships and praising those she loved.
Looking back on her career, Keaton told PEOPLE in 2019, “I don’t know anything, and I haven’t learned. Getting older hasn’t made me wiser. Without acting I would have been a misfit.”
Keaton never married. “Today I was thinking, I’m the only one in my generation of actresses who has been a single woman all her life,” she explained to PEOPLE in 2019. “I’m really glad I didn’t get married. I’m an oddball. I remember in high school, this guy came up to me and said, ‘One day you’re going to make a good wife.’ And I thought, ‘I don’t want to be a wife. No.’”
She was romantically linked to Allen, Pacino and Warren Beatty throughout her life. “Talent is so damn attractive,” she noted to PEOPLE.
Keaton had two children, daughter Dexter and son Duke, whom she adopted in 1996 and 2001, respectively. “Motherhood was not an urge I couldn’t resist, it was more like a thought I’d been thinking for a very long time. So I plunged in,” she told Ladies’ Home Journal in 2008.
Keaton is survived by her children.
