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Numerous accomplished female actors have appeared in love stories with humor. Typically, when aiming to win an Oscar, they have to reach for more serious roles. The late Diane Keaton, who died unexpectedly, followed a reverse trajectory and made it look effortless grace. Her first major film role was in the classic The Godfather, as weighty an film classic as ever created. However, concurrently, she returned to the role of Linda, the love interest of a geeky protagonist, in a movie version of the stage play Play It Again, Sam. She persistently switched serious dramas with funny love stories across the seventies, and the comedies that earned her the Academy Award for outstanding actress, altering the genre for good.

The Oscar-Winning Role

The award was for the film Annie Hall, written and directed by Woody Allen, with Keaton as the title character, a component of the couple’s failed relationship. Allen and Keaton were once romantically involved before making the film, and remained close friends for the rest of her life; in interviews, Keaton described Annie as a perfect image of herself, as seen by Allen. It might be simple, then, to assume Keaton’s performance involves doing what came naturally. Yet her breadth in her acting, from her Godfather role and her funny films with Allen and throughout that very movie, to underestimate her talent with rom-coms as simply turning on the charm – though she was, of course, tremendously charming.

Shifting Genres

Annie Hall notably acted as Allen’s shift between slapstick-oriented movies and a realistic approach. Therefore, it has lots of humor, fantasy sequences, and a improvised tapestry of a love story recollection mixed with painful truths into a fated love affair. In a similar vein, Diane, led an evolution in American rom-coms, portraying neither the fast-talking screwball type or the bombshell ditz popularized in the 1950s. Instead, she mixes and matches aspects of both to create something entirely new that still reads as oddly contemporary, cutting her confidence short with nervous pauses.

See, as an example the moment when Annie and Alvy initially bond after a match of tennis, fumbling over ping-ponging invitations for a ride (although only a single one owns a vehicle). The exchange is rapid, but veers erratically, with Keaton navigating her unease before winding up in a cul-de-sac of “la di da”, a expression that captures her nervous whimsy. The movie physicalizes that tone in the next scene, as she engages in casual chat while navigating wildly through New York roads. Subsequently, she composes herself delivering the tune in a club venue.

Complexity and Freedom

These aren’t examples of the character’s unpredictability. Across the film, there’s a dimensionality to her gentle eccentricity – her hippie-hangover willingness to try drugs, her anxiety about sea creatures and insects, her refusal to be manipulated by the protagonist’s tries to turn her into someone apparently somber (in his view, that signifies focused on dying). At first, the character may look like an odd character to earn an award; she plays the female lead in a story filtered through a man’s eyes, and the central couple’s arc doesn’t lead to adequate growth to suit each other. Yet Annie does change, in aspects clear and mysterious. She merely avoids becoming a more suitable partner for her co-star. Many subsequent love stories stole the superficial stuff – neurotic hang-ups, odd clothing – without quite emulating Annie’s ultimate independence.

Enduring Impact and Mature Parts

Maybe Keaton was wary of that pattern. Following her collaboration with Woody finished, she took a break from rom-coms; her movie Baby Boom is practically her single outing from the complete 1980s period. But during her absence, Annie Hall, the persona even more than the free-form film, emerged as a template for the category. Actress Meg Ryan, for example, is largely indebted for her comedic roles to Diane’s talent to embody brains and whimsy at once. This rendered Keaton like a everlasting comedy royalty while she was in fact portraying married characters (whether happily, as in that family comedy, or more strained, as in The First Wives Club) and/or parental figures (see the holiday film The Family Stone or Because I Said So) than independent ladies in love. Even during her return with the director, they’re a established married pair brought closer together by humorous investigations – and she eases into the part easily, beautifully.

But Keaton did have another major rom-com hit in the year 2003 with that Nancy Meyers movie, as a dramatist in love with a man who dates younger women (the star Jack Nicholson, naturally). The outcome? Her last Academy Award nod, and a complete niche of romances where older women (usually played by movie stars, but still!) take charge of their destinies. One factor her passing feels so sudden is that she kept producing such films up until recently, a frequent big-screen star. Now audiences will be pivoting from expecting her roles to realizing what an enormous influence she was on the rom-com genre as we know it. Should it be difficult to recall contemporary counterparts of Meg Ryan or Goldie Hawn who walk in her shoes, the reason may be it’s uncommon for an actor of Keaton’s skill to commit herself to a style that’s often just online content for a recent period.

A Unique Legacy

Reflect: there are 10 living female actors who have been nominated multiple times. It’s rare for one of those roles to begin in a rom-com, let alone half of them, as was the example of Keaton. {Because her