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Numerous great female actors have appeared in love stories with humor. Usually, when aiming to receive Oscar recognition, they must turn for dramatic parts. Diane Keaton, whose recent passing occurred, charted a different course and executed it with seamless ease. Her first major film role was in The Godfather, about as serious an film classic as ever created. Yet in the same year, she returned to the role of the character Linda, the focus of an awkward lead’s admiration, in a cinematic take of the stage play Play It Again, Sam. She continued to alternate serious dramas with lighthearted romances throughout the ’70s, and the lighter fare that won her an Oscar for outstanding actress, altering the genre for good.

The Academy Award Part

The award was for Annie Hall, helmed and co-scripted by Woody Allen, with Keaton as the title character, a component of the couple’s failed relationship. Allen and Keaton dated previously before making the film, and stayed good friends until her passing; in interviews, Keaton had characterized Annie as a perfect image of herself, through Allen’s eyes. It might be simple, then, to believe her portrayal involves doing what came naturally. But there’s too much range in Keaton’s work, contrasting her dramatic part and her Allen comedies and within Annie Hall itself, to discount her skill with rom-coms as simply turning on the charm – although she remained, of course, incredibly appealing.

Evolving Comedy

The film famously functioned as Allen’s shift between more gag-based broad comedies and a realistic approach. As such, it has plenty of gags, dreamlike moments, and a improvised tapestry of a romantic memory in between some stinging insights into a fated love affair. In a similar vein, Diane, presides over a transition in Hollywood love stories, portraying neither the screwball-era speed-talker or the glamorous airhead common in the fifties. On the contrary, she blends and combines aspects of both to forge a fresh approach that feels modern even now, cutting her confidence short with uncertain moments.

Observe, for instance the moment when Annie and Alvy first connect after a tennis game, awkwardly exchanging proposals for a lift (even though only just one drives). The dialogue is quick, but zig-zags around unpredictably, with Keaton maneuvering through her nervousness before concluding with of her whimsical line, a phrase that encapsulates her quirky unease. The film manifests that tone in the following sequence, as she makes blasé small talk while navigating wildly through city avenues. Afterward, she finds her footing singing It Had to Be You in a cabaret.

Depth and Autonomy

These aren’t examples of the character’s unpredictability. Throughout the movie, there’s a complexity to her gentle eccentricity – her lingering counterculture curiosity to experiment with substances, her panic over lobsters and spiders, her resistance to control by Alvy’s efforts to turn her into someone more superficially serious (which for him means focused on dying). At first, Annie could appear like an strange pick to win an Oscar; she’s the romantic lead in a film told from a male perspective, and the main pair’s journey doesn’t lead to sufficient transformation to make it work. Yet Annie does change, in manners visible and hidden. She simply fails to turn into a better match for Alvy. Many subsequent love stories borrowed the surface traits – neurotic hang-ups, odd clothing – failing to replicate her core self-reliance.

Ongoing Legacy and Senior Characters

Perhaps Keaton felt cautious of that pattern. Post her professional partnership with Allen ended, she paused her lighthearted roles; the film Baby Boom is essentially her sole entry from the entirety of the 1980s. But during her absence, the character Annie, the role possibly more than the unconventional story, served as a blueprint for the category. Meg Ryan, for example, is largely indebted for her comedic roles to Keaton’s skill to embody brains and whimsy at once. This cast Keaton as like a permanent rom-com queen while she was in fact portraying matrimonial parts (be it joyfully, as in Father of the Bride, or not as much, as in The First Wives Club) and/or moms (see The Family Stone or Because I Said So) than independent ladies in love. Even in her comeback with Woody Allen, they’re a seasoned spouses united more deeply by comic amateur sleuthing – and she eases into the part easily, beautifully.

Yet Diane experienced an additional romantic comedy success in the year 2003 with the film Something’s Gotta Give, as a playwright in love with a younger-dating cad (actor Jack Nicholson, naturally). The result? Her last Academy Award nod, and a entire category of romances where older women (usually played by movie stars, but still!) reclaim their love lives. One factor her passing feels so sudden is that she kept producing these stories as recently as last year, a constant multiplex presence. Now fans are turning from assuming her availability to realizing what an enormous influence she was on the romantic comedy as it exists today. Should it be difficult to recall modern equivalents of such actresses who walk in her shoes, that’s likely since it’s seldom for a star of her caliber to devote herself to a genre that’s often just online content for a long time.

An Exceptional Impact

Ponder: there are 10 living female actors who earned several Oscar nods. It’s rare for one of those roles to start in a light love story, not to mention multiple, as was the case for Keaton. {Because her