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Numerous great female actors have appeared in rom-coms. Typically, when aiming to earn an Academy Award, they must turn for more serious roles. Diane Keaton, who died unexpectedly, took an opposite path and executed it with seamless ease. Her initial breakout part was in the classic The Godfather, as weighty an film classic as ever produced. Yet in the same year, she reprised the part of the character Linda, the object of a nerdy hero’s affection, in a movie version of Broadway’s Play It Again, Sam. She regularly juggled intense dramas with romantic comedies during the 1970s, and it was the latter that earned her the Academy Award for outstanding actress, transforming the category forever.

The Award-Winning Performance

That Oscar was for the film Annie Hall, written and directed by Woody Allen, with Keaton portraying Annie, part of the film’s broken romance. The director and star were once romantically involved prior to filming, and stayed good friends until her passing; when speaking publicly, Keaton described Annie as an idealized version of herself, through Allen’s eyes. It would be easy, then, to think her acting meant being herself. Yet her breadth in Keaton’s work, from her Godfather role and her Allen comedies and inside Annie Hall alone, to dismiss her facility with funny romances as merely exuding appeal – though she was, of course, tremendously charming.

Shifting Genres

Annie Hall famously served as the director’s evolution between slapstick-oriented movies and a more naturalistic style. Therefore, it has lots of humor, dreamlike moments, and a freewheeling patchwork of a romantic memory in between some stinging insights into a doomed romantic relationship. Likewise, Keaton, led an evolution in U.S. romantic comedies, portraying neither the screwball-era speed-talker or the bombshell ditz common in the fifties. Instead, she mixes and matches elements from each to create something entirely new that seems current today, halting her assertiveness with uncertain moments.

Observe, for instance the scene where Annie and Alvy Singer initially bond after a tennis game, awkwardly exchanging proposals for a car trip (despite the fact that only one of them has a car). The exchange is rapid, but meanders unexpectedly, with Keaton navigating her unease before ending up stuck of her whimsical line, a phrase that encapsulates her quirky unease. The film manifests that tone in the following sequence, as she engages in casual chat while operating the car carelessly through New York roads. Afterward, she finds her footing delivering the tune in a club venue.

Complexity and Freedom

These are not instances of the character’s unpredictability. Across the film, there’s a dimensionality to her gentle eccentricity – her lingering counterculture curiosity to experiment with substances, her fear of crustaceans and arachnids, her refusal to be manipulated by Alvy’s attempts to shape her into someone outwardly grave (which for him means focused on dying). In the beginning, Annie could appear like an unusual choice to earn an award; she’s the romantic lead in a film told from a male perspective, and the central couple’s arc fails to result in adequate growth to make it work. Yet Annie does change, in ways both observable and unknowable. She simply fails to turn into a better match for the male lead. Many subsequent love stories borrowed the surface traits – neurotic hang-ups, odd clothing – failing to replicate Annie’s ultimate independence.

Lasting Influence and Later Roles

Possibly she grew hesitant of that tendency. After her working relationship with Allen ended, she paused her lighthearted roles; Baby Boom is practically her single outing from the whole decade of the eighties. But during her absence, the film Annie Hall, the character perhaps moreso than the loosely structured movie, emerged as a template for the style. Meg Ryan, for example, credits much of her love story success to Keaton’s skill to embody brains and whimsy at once. This made Keaton seem like a permanent rom-com queen even as she was actually playing matrimonial parts (whether happily, as in Father of the Bride, or more strained, as in that ensemble comedy) and/or moms (see The Family Stone or that mother-daughter story) than independent ladies in love. Even in her reunion with Allen, they’re a long-married couple united more deeply by comic amateur sleuthing – and she slips into that role easily, beautifully.

However, Keaton also enjoyed another major rom-com hit in the year 2003 with Something’s Gotta Give, as a playwright in love with a man who dates younger women (Jack Nicholson, naturally). What happened? One more Oscar recognition, and a complete niche of romantic tales where mature females (typically acted by celebrities, but still!) reclaim their love lives. A key element her loss is so startling is that she kept producing these stories up until recently, a frequent big-screen star. Now fans are turning from taking that presence for granted to understanding the huge impact she was on the rom-com genre as it is recognized. If it’s harder to think of contemporary counterparts of such actresses who walk in her shoes, that’s probably because it’s uncommon for an actor of Keaton’s skill to commit herself to a category that’s often just online content for a recent period.

A Unique Legacy

Ponder: there are a dozen performing women who received at least four best actress nominations. It’s unusual for a single part to start in a light love story, not to mention multiple, as was the case for Keaton. {Because her