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Many talented actresses have starred in rom-coms. Typically, if they want to receive Oscar recognition, they must turn for dramatic parts. The late Diane Keaton, whose recent passing occurred, took an opposite path and made it look disarmingly natural. Her initial breakout part was in the classic The Godfather, as dramatic an American masterpiece as ever produced. Yet in the same year, she revisited the character of the character Linda, the focus of an awkward lead’s admiration, in a cinematic take of Broadway’s Play It Again, Sam. She continued to alternate heavy films with romantic comedies throughout the ’70s, and the comedies that secured her the Oscar for outstanding actress, transforming the category forever.

The Award-Winning Performance

That Oscar was for Annie Hall, written and directed by Woody Allen, with Keaton as the title character, one half of the movie’s fractured love story. Allen and Keaton were once romantically involved before production, and stayed good friends until her passing; during conversations, Keaton had characterized Annie as a dream iteration of herself, through Allen’s eyes. It would be easy, then, to assume Keaton’s performance involves doing what came naturally. But there’s too much range in her acting, both between her Godfather performance and her comedic collaborations and within Annie Hall itself, to underestimate her talent with rom-coms as simply turning on the charm – even if she was, of course, highly charismatic.

Evolving Comedy

Annie Hall famously served as the director’s evolution between broader, joke-heavy films and a authentic manner. Consequently, it has lots of humor, imaginative scenes, and a improvised tapestry of a relationship memoir mixed with painful truths into a ill-fated romance. In a similar vein, Diane, presides over a transition in American rom-coms, embodying neither the rapid-fire comic lead or the bombshell ditz common in the fifties. Instead, she blends and combines aspects of both to forge a fresh approach that still reads as oddly contemporary, interrupting her own boldness with nervous pauses.

Watch, for example the scene where Annie and Alvy Singer initially hit it off after a match of tennis, fumbling over ping-ponging invitations for a lift (although only a single one owns a vehicle). The dialogue is quick, but zig-zags around unpredictably, with Keaton soloing around her nervousness before ending up stuck of that famous phrase, a phrase that encapsulates her quirky unease. The story embodies that feeling in the subsequent moment, as she has indifferent conversation while navigating wildly through New York roads. Later, she finds her footing singing It Had to Be You in a cabaret.

Complexity and Freedom

This is not evidence of Annie being unstable. Across the film, there’s a depth to her gentle eccentricity – her hippie-hangover willingness to try drugs, her panic over lobsters and spiders, her resistance to control by the protagonist’s tries to mold her into someone apparently somber (in his view, that signifies death-obsessed). In the beginning, the character may look like an odd character to win an Oscar; she is the love interest in a movie seen from a man’s point of view, and the main pair’s journey doesn’t bend toward adequate growth to make it work. Yet Annie does change, in aspects clear and mysterious. She just doesn’t become a better match for the male lead. Numerous follow-up films stole the superficial stuff – neurotic hang-ups, odd clothing – failing to replicate her core self-reliance.

Enduring Impact and Mature Parts

Perhaps Keaton felt cautious of that trend. After her working relationship with Woody finished, she took a break from rom-coms; the film Baby Boom is practically her single outing from the whole decade of the eighties. However, in her hiatus, the character Annie, the character perhaps moreso than the free-form film, served as a blueprint for the genre. Actress Meg Ryan, for example, owes most of her rom-com career to Keaton’s skill to embody brains and whimsy at once. This made Keaton seem like a timeless love story icon while she was in fact portraying more wives (if contentedly, as in the movie Father of the Bride, or more strained, as in The First Wives Club) and/or moms (see that Christmas movie or the comedy Because I Said So) than unattached women finding romance. Even in her comeback with Woody Allen, they’re a seasoned spouses brought closer together by funny detective work – and she slips into that role effortlessly, gracefully.

Yet Diane experienced an additional romantic comedy success in the year 2003 with Something’s Gotta Give, as a playwright in love with a older playboy (Jack Nicholson, naturally). The result? Her last Academy Award nod, and a entire category of romances where older women (typically acted by celebrities, but still!) reclaim their love lives. A key element her loss is so startling is that Diane continued creating such films as recently as last year, a constant multiplex presence. Now audiences will be pivoting from taking that presence for granted to grasping the significant effect she was on the rom-com genre as we know it. If it’s harder to think of present-day versions of those earlier stars who emulate her path, the reason may be it’s seldom for a star of her talent to dedicate herself to a style that’s mostly been streaming fodder for a recent period.

A Unique Legacy

Reflect: there are 10 living female actors 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