Here's a shocker--Diane Keaton doesn't make it to 80--outlived by Woody Allen, Jack Nicholson, Al Pacino, and Warren Beatty; no cause of, or date of death yet

By Grand Rapids Anonymous
saturday, october 11, 2025 at 8:25:00 p.m. edt

Here's a shocker--Diane Keaton doesn't make it to 80--outlived by Woody Allen, Jack Nicholson, Al Pacino, and Warren Beatty; no cause of, or date of death yet

(ny times)

“Diane Keaton, the vibrant, sometimes unconventional, always charmingly self-deprecating actress who won an Oscar for Woody Allen’s comedy Annie Hall and appeared in some 100 movie and television roles, an almost equal balance of them in comedies like Sleeper and The First Wives Club and dramas like The Godfather and Marvin’s Room, has died. She was 79.

“Her death was confirmed by Dori Rath, who produced a number of Ms. Keaton’s most recent films. She did not say where or when Ms. Keaton died or cite a cause.

“Ms. Keaton was 31 and a veteran of eight films, most of them comedies, when she starred as the title character in Annie Hall (1977) [a pseudo-biographical movie; Keaton's birth name was Diane Hall].

“Annie Hall, which won three other Oscars including best picture [Best Director and Best Screenplay for Woody Allen, which the times was loathe to reveal, and Best Picture for Charles H. Joffe, the producer], brought Ms. Keaton a shower of additional honors, including acting awards from the National Board of Review, National Society of Film Critics, New York Film Critics Circle and the British Academy of Film and Television Artists.

“Ms. Keaton received three other Oscar nominations. One was for the sweeping Oscar-winning drama Reds (1981), in which she played Louise Bryant, an intense 1910s writer hanging out with Greenwich Village socialists and Bolshevik revolutionaries, notably the activist [English translation: communist] journalist Jack Reed (Warren Beatty, who directed).

“Ms. Keaton with Woody Allen in Annie Hall. Mr. Allen, who cast Ms. Keaton in many of his films, said that “with the exception of Judy Holliday, she’s the finest screen comedienne we’ve ever seen.”

“The third was for Something’s Gotta Give (2003), a comedy about a successful playwright who turns an extremely tearful breakup into a new hit comedy. She attracts the attentions of a handsome, much younger doctor (Keanu Reeves) and inspires a sexist man in his 60s (Jack Nicholson) to fall in love with a woman his own age.

“Ms. Keaton was also a director. Her first film was Heaven (1987), a documentary on beliefs about the afterlife. In her last, she directed herself, Meg Ryan and Lisa Kudrow in the comic drama Hanging Up (2000), based on a novel by Delia Ephron.

“'A film career was always Ms. Keaton’s goal. She explained her aversion to theater as a lifelong pursuit on CBS Sunday Morning in 2010. “Night after night? Doing a play?” she said, putting an imaginary gun to her head. “That’s my idea of hell.”

“She was the eldest of four children of John Newton Ignatius Hall, known as Jack, a civil engineer, and Dorothy Deanne (Keaton) Hall, an amateur photographer who was also crowned Mrs. Los Angeles in a beauty pageant for homemakers.

“She grew up in Santa Ana, Calif., near Los Angeles, and briefly attended community colleges, first Santa Ana and then Orange Coast. At 19, she dropped out and moved to New York to study acting at the Neighborhood Playhouse.

“She made her Broadway debut in the hit musical “Hair,” first as a member of the ensemble and then as Sheila, the female lead. (She turned down the $50 bonus offered to actors who were willing to appear nude in one scene.)

“Her Broadway career continued and her partnership with Mr. Allen began with Play It Again, Sam (1969), in which she played a romantically desirable married woman opposite Mr. Allen as a nebbishy divorced friend. That performance earned her a Tony Award nomination for best featured actress in a play

. “Her film debut came the next year, when she played an unhappy young wife at a suburban wedding in Lovers and Other Strangers (1970). Then, after a handful of television appearances, she played Kay Adams, the clearly non-Sicilian girlfriend turned trusting wife of Michael Corleone (played by Al Pacino), in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather (1972). (She and Mr. Pacino began dating in 1974, the year The Godfather, Part II was released.)”

GRA: I thought she was sexy and adorable. Tremendous in the Woody Allen movies and just about anything else, too.

--GRA