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Many talented performers have starred in romantic comedies. Usually, when aiming to earn an Academy Award, they must turn for dramatic parts. Diane Keaton, who died unexpectedly, followed a reverse trajectory and pulled it off with seamless ease. Her first major film role was in the classic The Godfather, as dramatic an film classic as has ever been made. But that same year, she reprised the part of the character Linda, the focus of an awkward lead’s admiration, in a movie version of the stage play 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, altering the genre for good.

The Academy Award Part

That Oscar was for Annie Hall, written and directed by Woody Allen, with Keaton portraying Annie, a component of the couple’s failed relationship. Allen and Keaton were once romantically involved before making the film, and stayed good friends for the rest of her life; during conversations, Keaton had characterized Annie as an idealized version of herself, as seen by Allen. It might be simple, then, to believe her portrayal required little effort. However, her versatility in her performances, both between her Godfather performance and her comedic collaborations and inside Annie Hall alone, to underestimate her talent with funny romances as just being charming – although she remained, of course, tremendously charming.

Evolving Comedy

The film famously functioned as Allen’s transition between more gag-based broad comedies and a more naturalistic style. Therefore, it has lots of humor, dreamlike moments, and a improvised tapestry of a romantic memory alongside sharp observations into a ill-fated romance. Keaton, similarly, led an evolution in Hollywood love stories, playing neither the screwball-era speed-talker or the sexy scatterbrain famous from the ’50s. Rather, she blends and combines elements from each to create something entirely new that still reads as oddly contemporary, halting her assertiveness with her own false-start hesitations.

Watch, for example the scene where Annie and Alvy Singer first connect after a game on the courts, awkwardly exchanging proposals for a ride (even though only one of them has a car). The exchange is rapid, but meanders unexpectedly, with Keaton navigating her nervousness before ending up stuck of her whimsical line, a words that embody her anxious charm. The movie physicalizes that feeling in the next scene, as she has indifferent conversation while operating the car carelessly through city avenues. Afterward, she composes herself singing It Had to Be You in a nightclub.

Complexity and Freedom

These are not instances of Annie acting erratic. During the entire story, there’s a complexity to her gentle eccentricity – her hippie-hangover willingness to try drugs, her panic over lobsters and spiders, her unwillingness to be shaped by Alvy’s efforts to mold her into someone outwardly grave (which for him means preoccupied with mortality). Initially, Annie might seem like an unusual choice to win an Oscar; she’s the romantic lead in a movie seen from a man’s point of view, and the central couple’s arc fails to result in either changing enough to make it work. Yet Annie does change, in manners visible and hidden. She simply fails to turn into a better match for Alvy. Many subsequent love stories borrowed the surface traits – neurotic hang-ups, eccentric styles – not fully copying her final autonomy.

Ongoing Legacy and Senior Characters

Maybe Keaton was wary of that pattern. After her working relationship with Woody finished, she paused her lighthearted roles; the film Baby Boom is essentially her sole entry from the whole decade of the eighties. Yet while she was gone, the film Annie Hall, the persona even more than the unconventional story, emerged as a template for the genre. 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 everlasting comedy royalty even as she was actually playing matrimonial parts (be it joyfully, as in the movie Father of the Bride, or less so, as in The First Wives Club) and/or parental figures (see the holiday film The Family Stone or Because I Said So) than unattached women finding romance. Even during her return with Woody Allen, they’re a established married pair brought closer together by funny detective work – and she slips into that role effortlessly, gracefully.

But Keaton did have an additional romantic comedy success in the year 2003 with that Nancy Meyers movie, as a dramatist in love with a younger-dating cad (Jack Nicholson, naturally). The result? Her final Oscar nomination, and a entire category of romances where senior actresses (typically acted by celebrities, but still!) take charge of their destinies. One factor her loss is so startling is that she kept producing those movies as recently as last year, a frequent big-screen star. Now fans are turning from expecting her roles to grasping the significant effect she was on the rom-com genre as we know it. Is it tough to imagine present-day versions of Meg Ryan or Goldie Hawn who similarly follow in Keaton’s footsteps, that’s probably because it’s rare for a performer of her caliber to commit herself to a genre that’s often just online content for a long time.

A Unique Legacy

Reflect: there are a dozen performing women who have been nominated multiple times. It’s rare for one of those roles to originate in a romantic comedy, especially not several, as was the case for Keaton. {Because her