Diane Keaton, ‘Annie Hall’ Star and Style Icon, Dies at 79

Diane Keaton, the Academy Award-winning Annie Hall actress who had Hollywood in her hands with that first “la-di-da,” has died at 79, according to People. Per a family spokesperson, her loved ones have stated no further details will be shared at this time. She is survived by her two children.

In 1978, The New Yorker wrote that Keaton was “one of the most comedically pure and brainy actresses in our midst”. It was the same year she scooped an Oscar, Golden Globe and BAFTA Award for her performance as the anxious title lead in Woody Allen’s Annie Hall. Time magazine had called her “the funniest woman now working in films” the previous year, and Rolling Stone defined Diane Keaton as “The Next Hepburn” on its cover.

Keaton after winning her Oscar for Annie Hall in 1978.

Photo: Getty Images

Known for a film repertoire that roamed from The Godfather (1972) and Manhattan (1979) to Baby Boom (1987), Keaton also cut a sartorial dash in fashion, with her penchant for bowler hats, bow ties and berets. In belts and brogues, peplums and pearls, and heels and heavy white socks, California-born Keaton trailblazed an androgynous aesthetic into the mainstream. “Annie’s style was Diane’s style—very eclectic,” designer Ralph Lauren told Vogue in 1978. Her costumes were peppered with patterned ties and waistcoats, oversized jackets and vests, floppy men’s hats and cowboy boots. “We shared a sensibility, but she had a style that was all her own. Annie Hall was pure Diane Keaton.” The film’s costume designer Ruth Morley told Vogue at the time: “Now people tell me that all the girls in London and Paris are turned out like Annie Hall… It’s crazy, it’s practically become a household word!”

Keaton with Woody Allen on the set of Annie Hall.

Photo: Bettmann

Keaton accepted her Academy Award in signature style—a taupe blazer pinned with a pink carnation, a swaggeringly long skirt and clumpy ankle boots. She earned three more Best Actress Oscar nominations for Reds (1981), Marvin’s Room (1996) and Something’s Gotta Give (2003), for which she scooped a Golden Globe. Her performance as feminist Louise Bryant in Reds was feted as “nothing less than splendid” by The New York Times.

A face of L’Oréal since 2006, Keaton was a family favourite in Father of the Bride (1991), Father of the Bride Part II (1995) and The First Wives Club (1996). She later starred in The Family Stone (2005), Hampstead (2017), Book Club (2018) and voiced Dory’s goldfish mother in Finding Dory (2016). She directed Unstrung Heroes (1995), Hanging Up (2000), starring Lisa Kudrow and Meg Ryan, an episode of Twin Peaks (1991) and music videos including Belinda Carlisle’s 1987 hit Heaven Is a Place on Earth.

Keaton starred in eight Woody Allen films, including Manhattan, Sleeper (1973), Love and Death (1975), Radio Days (1987) and Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993), which earned her a Best Actress Golden Globe Award nomination. The couple first met—and dated for many years after—in 1968 when Keaton auditioned for Allen’s Broadway production of Play It Again, Sam at the Broadhurst Theatre, New York. She landed the lead part as the neurotic Linda Christie and reprised the role in Allen’s 1972 screen version. “She’d come in every day with an absolutely spectacularly imaginative combination of clothes. They were just great,” Allen told Rolling Stone in 1977. “Oh, she would—she was the type that would come in with, you know, a football jersey and a skirt… and combat boots and, you know… you know, oven mittens.” Allen predicted then that she “could be the biggest female star in the country.” The New York Times review read, “The supporting cast, especially Miss Keaton, is excellent.”

Diane Hall was born on January 5, 1946, in Los Angeles to amateur photographer mother Dorothy Keaton and civil engineer father Jack Hall. She grew up in Santa Ana, California, the eldest of four children, taking singing lessons and acting in school plays. Her breakout role as Nancy Twinkle in the Santa Ana High School production of Little Mary Sunshine saw her singing Mata Hari. “When Mom and Dad found me backstage, their faces were beaming,” Keaton wrote in her 2011 memoir Then Again. “I’d never seen my dad so excited. I could tell he was surprised by his awkward daughter—the one who’d flunked algebra and smashed the new Ford station wagon. For one thrilling moment, I was his Seabiscuit, Audrey Hepburn, and Wonder Woman rolled into one.”

After high school, Keaton—who took her mother’s maiden name as her own—spent three semesters at her local junior college before leaving for New York, aged 19, to study acting at the Neighborhood Playhouse. In her second year, she acted at the Woodstock Playhouse but then returned home to the West Coast. Propped up by her parents, Keaton came back to New York in 1968 and got a part in the rock musical Hair on Broadway, with the whole cast shot by photographer Richard Avedon for American Vogue.

Keaton, below center, with the cast of Hair in 1968.

Photo: Getty Images

Asked to lose weight for her role, Keaton went on a peculiar diet. “It’s one of those weird ones—placenta of unborn lamb. A shot every day,” she told The New York Times in 1972. “The Hair people paid for half of it and I paid the other half—$35 a week—and I lost a lot of weight and never gained it back.” She refused to take her clothes off for the nude scene. “It wasn’t for any sort of philosophical reason. It was just that I was too scared.”

Her stage stint in Play It Again, Sam came in 1969, followed by a movie role in Lovers and Other Strangers (1970). A small part but enough to enrapture, with Al Ruddy, producer of The Godfather casting her as Kay Adams. On the set of The Godfather Part II (1974), Keaton was inspired for her Annie Hall aesthetic. “I stole what I wanted to wear from the cool-looking women on the streets of SoHo. Annie’s khaki pants, vest, and tie came from them,” she wrote in her memoir. “I stole the hat from Aurore Clément, Dean Tavoularis’s future wife, who showed up on the set of The Godfather Part II one day wearing a man’s slouchy bolero pulled down low over her forehead. Aurore’s hat put the finishing touch on the so-called Annie Hall look.”

Keaton in The Godfather Part II.

Photo: CBS Photo Archive

Keaton had long relationships with Warren Beatty, Al Pacino and Allen but never married. “I have this feeling—I don’t know if I really want to stay in New York,” she told The New York Times in 1972. “My little dream has always been to have a house on the ocean in California—not a big one, just a little house with about three or four dogs. And a little old car. That’s my dream.”

Keaton adopted her daughter Dexter in 1996 and son Duke in 2001, and lived in a Spanish colonial revival in Beverly Hills with two rescue dogs, elaborate archways, courtyards and drama. She kept 20 brimmed hats, two top hats, and 34 caps and berets displayed neatly in her bedroom wardrobe.

In 2019 she starred in Poms, a film about a retirement home cheerleading squad that raised issues about loneliness. “I know what I am by now,” she told the Los Angeles Times. “I know how old I am. I know what my limitations are and what I can and can’t do. So if something appeals to me, I’m definitely going to go for it.”

Photo: Getty Images

Keaton cites Cary Grant as the inspiration for her lifelong hat obsession; her adopted daughter, Dexter, is even named after his character, C K Dexter Haven, in A Philadelphia Story. She has at least 40 hats in her collection now—her favorite being a bowler from Baron.