BY: LBS STAFF
Published 4 weeks ago
Diane Keaton has died. She was 79.
Further details have not been released, and her loved ones have asked for privacy during this time.
Keaton’s extraordinary career began in the 1970s, when she rose to prominence through her breakout role as Kay Adams in The Godfather films and her many collaborations with director Woody Allen. In 1977, she won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in Annie Hall, a role that also cemented her status as a style icon. Over the decades, she starred in an impressive array of films, including The First Wives Club, several beloved Nancy Meyers projects, and the Book Club franchise.
Born Diane Hall in Los Angeles in 1946, Keaton was the eldest of four children. Her father worked as a civil engineer, while her mother was a homemaker with a creative spirit that deeply inspired her daughter. “Secretly in her heart of hearts she probably wanted to be an entertainer of some kind,” Keaton told PEOPLE in 2004. “She sang. She played the piano. She was beautiful. She was my advocate.”
Keaton discovered her love for performance in high school theater. After graduating in 1964, she briefly studied drama in college before leaving to pursue her dreams in New York. Because another actress was already registered under her birth name, she adopted her mother’s maiden name — Keaton — for the stage.
In 1968, she joined the Broadway cast of Hair as an understudy, but behind the scenes she struggled with bulimia, an illness she later spoke about candidly. “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 shared in 2017. Therapy eventually helped her recover, though she said the disorder had robbed her of joy during those early years.
Her Broadway career took off with her starring role in Woody Allen’s Play It Again, Sam, which earned her a Tony nomination in 1969. A year later, she made her film debut in Lovers and Other Strangers. Her major breakthrough came when Francis Ford Coppola cast her in The Godfather (1972). Remarkably, she auditioned without having read the novel. “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,” she told PEOPLE in 2022.
The film became a cultural phenomenon and won Best Picture. Keaton reprised her role in The Godfather Part II (1974) and returned again for the final installment in 1990. During the same era, she became a fixture in Allen’s films, appearing in Play It Again, Sam (1972), Sleeper (1973), and Love and Death (1975). Despite her success, Keaton admitted that insecurities lingered; she famously avoided watching her own films, telling PEOPLE in 1975, “I just don’t like the way I look and sound.”
Her performance in Annie Hall (1977) became one of the defining moments of her career. The character’s menswear-inspired wardrobe reflected Keaton’s real-life style, and the film’s success earned her an Oscar and enduring cultural influence. She went on to star in a string of acclaimed films, including Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977), Reds (1981), Shoot the Moon (1982), and The Little Drummer Girl (1984).
Her partnership with director Nancy Meyers began with Baby Boom (1987) and continued with Father of the Bride(1991), its 1995 sequel, and Something’s Gotta Give (2003), which earned her another Oscar nomination. In 2020, she told Vulture, “Honestly, you can think it’s sappy, but I love the Father of the Bride movies. They were so touching.”
In 1996, she starred alongside Goldie Hawn and Bette Midler in The First Wives Club, a comedic hit that ended with their memorable rendition of “You Don’t Own Me.” She later appeared in The Family Stone, Because I Said So, Finding Dory, Book Club (and its sequel), and Poms. On television, she made a rare starring appearance in HBO’s The Young Pope(2016). Behind the camera, Keaton directed several projects, including the documentary Heaven (1987), Hanging Up(2000), and an episode of Twin Peaks.
Keaton embraced new forms of connection in later years, becoming an enthusiastic Instagram presence and appearing in Justin Bieber’s 2021 music video “Ghost.” Reflecting on her life in 2019, she told PEOPLE, “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, a choice she spoke about with candor. “I’m the only one in my generation of actresses who has been a single woman all her life,” she said in 2019. “I’m really glad I didn’t get married. I’m an oddball.” She was romantically linked at various points to Woody Allen, Al Pacino, and Warren Beatty, once remarking that “talent is so damn attractive.”
She became a mother through adoption, welcoming daughter Dexter in 1996 and son Duke in 2001. “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.
Diane Keaton is survived by her two children, Dexter and Duke.
RIP.
