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Plenty of great performers have performed in rom-coms. Typically, when aiming to earn an Academy Award, they must turn for weightier characters. Diane Keaton, who passed away recently, took an opposite path and made it look seamless ease. Her debut significant performance was in the classic The Godfather, as weighty an cinematic masterpiece as has ever been made. But that same year, she revisited the character of the character Linda, the love interest of a geeky protagonist, in a movie version of the theatrical production Play It Again, Sam. She continued to alternate intense dramas with lighthearted romances throughout the ’70s, and the comedies that won her an Oscar for leading actress, transforming the category forever.

The Academy Award Part

That Oscar was for the film Annie Hall, helmed and co-scripted by Woody Allen, with Keaton as the title character, one half of the movie’s fractured love story. Allen and Keaton dated previously prior to filming, and stayed good friends throughout her life; when speaking publicly, Keaton described Annie as a dream iteration of herself, from Allen’s perspective. One could assume, then, to believe her portrayal required little effort. But there’s too much range in her acting, both between her Godfather performance and her funny films with Allen and throughout that very movie, to underestimate her talent with funny romances as just being charming – even if she was, of course, highly charismatic.

A Transition in Style

Annie Hall famously served as Allen’s transition between broader, joke-heavy films and a more naturalistic style. As such, it has plenty of gags, fantasy sequences, and a freewheeling patchwork of a love story recollection in between some stinging insights into a fated love affair. Keaton, similarly, oversaw a change in Hollywood love stories, embodying neither the fast-talking screwball type or the bombshell ditz popularized in the 1950s. On the contrary, she fuses and merges elements from each to create something entirely new that still reads as oddly contemporary, halting her assertiveness with her own false-start hesitations.

See, as an example the sequence with the couple initially bond after a tennis game, fumbling over ping-ponging invitations for a car trip (even though only just one drives). The exchange is rapid, but veers erratically, with Keaton navigating her unease before winding up in a cul-de-sac of that famous phrase, a expression that captures her nervous whimsy. The movie physicalizes that sensibility in the following sequence, as she makes blasé small talk while driving recklessly through New York roads. Afterward, she finds her footing performing the song in a club venue.

Dimensionality and Independence

These aren’t examples of the character’s unpredictability. Across the film, there’s a dimensionality to her light zaniness – her lingering counterculture curiosity to try drugs, her panic over lobsters and spiders, her unwillingness to be shaped by Alvy’s attempts to shape her into someone apparently somber (in his view, that signifies preoccupied with mortality). Initially, Annie could appear like an odd character to receive acclaim; she is the love interest in a film told from a male perspective, and the central couple’s arc doesn’t bend toward adequate growth to suit each other. However, she transforms, in aspects clear and mysterious. She merely avoids becoming a more suitable partner for Alvy. Many subsequent love stories borrowed the surface traits – anxious quirks, quirky fashions – without quite emulating her final autonomy.

Enduring Impact and Mature Parts

Perhaps Keaton felt cautious 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 loosely structured movie, served as a blueprint for the genre. Actress Meg Ryan, for example, owes most of her rom-com career to Keaton’s ability to play smart and flibbertigibbet simultaneously. This cast Keaton as like a timeless love story icon while she was in fact portraying matrimonial parts (whether happily, as in Father of the Bride, or more strained, as in that ensemble comedy) and/or moms (see that Christmas movie or Because I Said So) than single gals falling in love. Even in her reunion with the director, they’re a seasoned spouses brought closer together by humorous investigations – and she eases into the part effortlessly, gracefully.

But Keaton did have an additional romantic comedy success in 2003 with the film Something’s Gotta Give, as a dramatist in love with a man who dates younger women (the star Jack Nicholson, naturally). The result? Her final Oscar nomination, and a complete niche of romances where older women (typically acted by celebrities, but still!) take charge of their destinies. One factor her death seems like such a shock is that Diane continued creating those movies just last year, a regular cinema fixture. Now audiences will be pivoting from expecting her roles to understanding the huge impact she was on the rom-com genre as it exists today. Should it be difficult to recall modern equivalents of such actresses who emulate her path, that’s probably because it’s uncommon for an actor of her talent to dedicate herself to a style that’s mostly been streaming fodder for a long time.

A Special Contribution

Consider: there are ten active actresses who received at least four best actress nominations. It’s rare for one of those roles to start in a light love story, especially not several, as was the situation with Diane. {Because her