Diane Keaton, Oscar-Winning Star of ‘Annie Hall,’ Dies at 79

Diane Keaton, who sparkled in her Oscar-winning turn as the titular quirky woman in Woody Allen’s Annie Hall and portrayed the outsider Kay Adams-Corleone in Francis Ford Coppola’s three Godfather films, has died. She was 79.

Her death in California was reported by People magazine. TMZ said an ambulance arrived at her home shortly after 8 a.m. Saturday and transported her to a hospital.

Keaton also starred as a playwright/mother who becomes involved with a nefarious womanizer (Jack Nicholson) in Something’s Gotta Give (2003), good for her fourth best actress Oscar nomination. She was nominated for her work as a writer-activist in Warren Beatty’s Reds (1981) and as a woman with leukemia in Marvin’s Room (1996) as well.

Keaton had an acclaimed performance as a Catholic school teacher who frequents singles bars in the dark Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977), starred in the thriller The Little Drummer Girl (1984) and co-starred with Jessica Lange and Sissy Spacek in the emotional Crimes of the Heart (1986).

She also played warm, off-center mothers in such comedies as Baby Boom (1987) and the two Father of the Bride films of 1991 and ’95 and delighted in The First Wives Club (1996), with GoldieHawnand BetteMidler, and the two Book Club movies, with Jane Fonda, Candice Bergen and Mary Steenburgen, of 2018 and ’23.

Allen wrote the iconic, insecure “la-di-dah” role in Annie Hall (1977) specifically for her, based on their real-life romance. (In THR‘s original review, Arthur Knight said Keaton “has to be the consummate actress of our generation.”)

She also starred for Allen in the film version of Play It Again, Sam (1972), Sleeper (1973), Love and Death (1975), Interiors (1978), Manhattan (1979), Radio Days (1987) and Manhattan Murder Mystery(1993). The filmmaker credited her as his muse during a very important portion of his career.

With her idiosyncratic wardrobe in Annie Hall, complete with menswear, ties, vests, fedoras and baggy pants, she inspired a “look.” And she could sing; who doesn’t admire her silky rendition of “Seems Like Old Times” in the film.

Throughout her life and career, the treasured Keaton was a fun, adorable interview, charming everyone with her half-completed sentences, eruptive giggles and shy warbles.

On the eve of Keaton accepting the American Film Institute’s Life Achievement Award in 2017, THR’s Sheri Linden praised the actress’ “singular mix of intellect and heart, innocence and yearning that has infused dozens of roles over the past 45 years.”

Her “self-questioning honesty, familiar to anyone who has seen her interviewed or read her memoirs, is also essential to her distinctive work as an actor, whether she’s spoofing it up in a wacky satire, bringing a historical figure to full-blooded life or exploring the recognizable challenges of parenthood and marriage.

“She doesn’t need to stake a claim on center stage, even when she’s playing the title character — the immortal Annie Hall — in a movie that’s a valentine to her talent and spirit. She draws us in effortlessly.”

Asked by THR’s Mia Galuppo in a 2023 interview what makes a character one she would want to play, she replied: “It’s someone who has issues that are pulsing in her being. It’s also about the people, the actors and the directors [you work with]. It all depends.

“[Certain people] will let you be partially this or feel better about whatever you’re doing, as opposed to you worrying about how it’s all going to bear up. But I’ve been around a long time, and I still like it.”

Born Diane Hall — the oldest of four children — in Los Angeles on Jan. 5, 1946, she was inspired to become an actress by her mom, Dorothy, who was once named “Mrs. Los Angeles” in a pageant for homemakers. “I was a 6-year-old watching my mother in the Highland Park Theatre, which is still there, and I watched her win,” she said.

She performed in productions at Santa Ana College, and after a short stint at USC moved to New York, where she studied at The Neighborhood Playhouse under Sanford Meisner and changed her surname to Keaton (her mother’s maiden name) because another actress had that name.

(Subsequently, another young actor, so inspired, went from Michael Douglas to Michael Keaton.)

Her first professional role came in 1968 as a replacement in the original Broadway production of Hair, though it was said she refused to disrobe during performances. After nine months in the long-running musical, she auditioned for Allen’s stage comedy Play It Again, Sam and earned a Tony nomination in 1969 (her character has an affair with Allen’s magazine writer).

She said a big milestone for her was getting a 1970 commercial forHour After Hour deodorant. “That was the biggest job I ever had at the time,” she said. “That sealed the deal. I would be nervous, anxious, try to work and then do the job. It got more and more normal.”

Keaton made her motion picture debut as an unhappy wife in Lovers and Other Strangers (1970) before being hired to portray Michael Corleone’s (Al Pacino) girlfriend, Kay Adams, in The Godfather (1972). “She played a non-Sicilian in a mafia clan, a Baptist among Catholics, a woman in a man’s world, an outsider looking in,” Linden noted.

Getting cast by Coppola “terrified” her, she said.

“I didn’t understand why me,” she told Galuppo. “I mean, I went up to the audition. I didn’t even really — I hadn’t read it. See, this is bad! But I needed a job, so I got up there. I’d been auditioning around for about a year, and then this happened like that. And I kept thinking, ‘Why me? Why would he cast me?’ I didn’t understand it. I still don’t, really.”

In 1976, she played in two movie comedies, I Will, I Will … for Now and Harry and Walter Go to New York., before Annie Hall happened.

In addition to The Godfather sequels in 1974 and 1990, her big-screen résumé included Shoot the Moon (1982), The Good Mother (1988), The Other Sister (1999), Town & Country (2001), The Family Stone (2005), Because I Said So (2007), 5 Flights Up (2014), Finding Dory(2016) and Summer Camp (2024).

She teamed with filmmaker Nancy Meyers on Baby Boom, the two Father of the Bride movies and Something’s Gotta Give.

Keaton also directed. On the film side, she helmed Heaven (1987), a documentary about the afterlife, and the scripted Unstrung Heroes (1995), the story of a boy stricken with cancer, and the comedy Hanging Up (2000). On the TV side, she handled episodes of China Beach, Twin Peaks and Pasadena.

“I thought I could do it, but really, it was rough,” she said of directing. “I don’t mean [people] were rough or anyone, it was me. Sometimes it’d be a little easier, and then other times you’d be anxious. You need to really be on it and really smart about what you’re delving into with the subject that you’ve been given. I get that as an actress more — or an actor type or whatever I am — just by being one of the characters.”

She also produced films including Gus VanSant’sElephant (2003).

The stylish Keaton — known for her trousers, turtlenecks, boots, big belts and bigger hats — also was a committed preservationist whose writing and photography led to memoirs and photo books of movie stills, old hotel ballrooms and lobbies and California architecture. She had a long history in renovating properties and was known as a “serial home flipper.”

She said her love for houses startedwhen her father, Jack, was a real estate agent, and she used tofollow him to open houses in L.A.“I always had an interest in homes and the concept of home, but the problem is I never really land and stay. Something’swrong. But something’sright, because I love it,” KeatontoldWine Spectator in 2017.

She built a home in Sullivan Canyon that takes up8,000 square feet and isfilledwith burnt-red brick.In her 2017 book,The House That Pinterest Built, she noted her dream home was inspiredbyThe Three Little Pigs andwrote,“I knew I was going to live in a brick house when I grew up.”

One of her more famous renovations was a 1920s Pacific Palisades home designed by Frank Lloyd Wright that she purchased in 2007 for $9.1 million and spent years working on. It was restoredto Wright’soriginal designs, except for a renovated kitchen, and was listed in May for $12.8 million.

Survivors include her children, daughter Dexter and son Duke, whom she adopted in 1996 and 2001, respectively. She never married, though she did date Allen, Pacino and Beatty. “I’m really glad I didn’t get married. I’m an oddball,” she once told People.

About her acting career, “I feel just the same way I’ve always felt about whatever comes my way,” she told Galuppo. “If it’s OK, then I can manage it. Or maybe if I feel like if I’m not really that comfortable, I’m going to learn something from somebody.”