For all the self-assuredness that Diane Keaton, who sadly passed away earlier this month, brought to her on-screen performances, there always was a hint of restlessness about her. A wonderfully gifted, wide-ranging actress capable of doing everything from deep psychodrama to light comedy, Keaton often seemed to be searching for something just out of reach. Sometimes it was a deeper emotional truth in the characters she played. Sometimes it was the perfect place to live, a pursuit that gained her notoriety as a restorer of historic homes. And sometimes it was physical perfection, a fixation that revealed itself in her long struggle with anorexia, complications of which were said to play a role in her death. For better and for worse, Keaton was a perfectionist: never satisfied with the high standards she set for herself, always striving to go a little further.
She remained powerfully iconoclastic — in her performances, her career choices, and even in her preparation for movie roles. In an interview, Jack Nicholson recalled how Keaton would, unlike most Hollywood actors, memorize entire scripts before filming started, rather than learning her lines scene by scene. That discipline reflected her roots in theater — an unusual background for an actress born and raised in Los Angeles, who didn’t find real success until she moved to New York, started out in independent stage productions, and eventually made it to Broadway. It was there, starring in Woody Allen’s play Play It Again, Sam — a wry riff on Casablanca — that she found her breakout role and her path to film stardom.
Keaton went on to star opposite Allen in a number of his films, including Sleeper, Love and Death, and — most famously — Annie Hall, becoming both a close collaborator and, for a time, romantic partner. Her performances also caught the attention of a young Francis Ford Coppola who cast her in The Godfather as Kay Adams, the naive young fiancé and later long-suffering wife of…
Auteur: Alexander Deley
