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Numerous great performers have appeared in rom-coms. Usually, when aiming to earn an Academy Award, they need to shift for dramatic parts. Diane Keaton, who died unexpectedly, charted a different course and pulled it off with seamless ease. Her first major film role was in the classic The Godfather, as dramatic an cinematic masterpiece as ever created. Yet in the same year, she reprised the part of the character Linda, the focus of an awkward lead’s admiration, in a movie version of Broadway’s Play It Again, Sam. She persistently switched serious dramas with funny love stories during the 1970s, and it was the latter that secured her the Oscar for leading actress, transforming the category forever.

The Oscar-Winning Role

The award was for the film Annie Hall, co-written and directed by Allen, with Keaton portraying Annie, part of the film’s broken romance. Woody and Diane dated previously before making the film, and stayed good friends until her passing; in interviews, Keaton described Annie as an idealized version of herself, as seen by Allen. It would be easy, then, to believe her portrayal meant being herself. However, her versatility in her acting, both between her Godfather performance and her comedic collaborations and within Annie Hall itself, to discount her skill with romantic comedy as just being charming – although she remained, of course, tremendously charming.

A Transition in Style

Annie Hall notably acted as Allen’s transition between broader, joke-heavy films and a realistic approach. Therefore, it has lots of humor, dreamlike moments, and a freewheeling patchwork of a love story recollection alongside sharp observations into a ill-fated romance. Likewise, Keaton, led an evolution in American rom-coms, portraying neither the screwball-era speed-talker or the bombshell ditz famous from the ’50s. On the contrary, she fuses and merges aspects of both to forge a fresh approach that feels modern even now, halting her assertiveness with nervous pauses.

See, as an example the moment when Annie and Alvy initially hit it off after a game on the courts, awkwardly exchanging proposals for a car trip (even though only one of them has a car). The exchange is rapid, but zig-zags around unpredictably, with Keaton soloing around her own discomfort before concluding with of “la di da”, a expression that captures her nervous whimsy. The movie physicalizes that tone in the subsequent moment, as she makes blasé small talk while navigating wildly through city avenues. Afterward, she composes herself delivering the tune in a cabaret.

Complexity and Freedom

These aren’t examples of Annie being unstable. During the entire story, there’s a depth to her light zaniness – her post-hippie openness to sample narcotics, her fear of crustaceans and arachnids, her refusal to be manipulated by the protagonist’s tries to shape her into someone outwardly grave (in his view, that signifies focused on dying). At first, Annie might seem like an unusual choice to receive acclaim; she’s the romantic lead in a film told from a male perspective, and the protagonists’ trajectory fails to result in sufficient transformation to make it work. But Annie evolves, in aspects clear and mysterious. She just doesn’t become a more compatible mate for Alvy. Numerous follow-up films took the obvious elements – anxious quirks, eccentric styles – failing to replicate Annie’s ultimate independence.

Lasting Influence and Later Roles

Perhaps Keaton felt cautious of that tendency. Post her professional partnership with Woody finished, she stepped away from romantic comedies; Baby Boom is practically her single outing from the whole decade of the eighties. Yet while she was gone, Annie Hall, the role possibly more than the loosely structured movie, served as a blueprint for the style. Meg Ryan, for example, credits much of her love story success to Keaton’s ability to portray intelligence and flightiness together. This made Keaton seem like a permanent rom-com queen even as she was actually playing more wives (be it joyfully, as in the movie Father of the Bride, or less so, as in the film The First Wives Club) and/or moms (see The Family Stone or that mother-daughter story) than unattached women finding romance. Even in her reunion with Allen, they’re a seasoned spouses brought closer together by humorous investigations – and she eases into the part easily, beautifully.

However, Keaton also enjoyed another major rom-com hit in the year 2003 with that Nancy Meyers movie, as a writer in love with a older playboy (Jack Nicholson, naturally). The outcome? Her last Academy Award nod, and a complete niche of romantic tales where mature females (typically acted by celebrities, but still!) reassert their romantic and/or social agency. A key element her loss is so startling is that Keaton was still making such films just last year, a regular cinema fixture. Today viewers must shift from assuming her availability to realizing what an enormous influence she was on the rom-com genre as we know it. Is it tough to imagine present-day versions of such actresses who walk in her shoes, that’s probably because it’s rare for a performer of her talent to commit herself to a style that’s frequently reduced to digital fare for a long time.

An Exceptional Impact

Consider: there are ten active actresses who have been nominated multiple times. It’s uncommon for any performance to originate in a romantic comedy, not to mention multiple, as was the case for Keaton. {Because her