Diane Keaton 1946 – 2025

“Annie Hall” for me was one of those films that was a game changer. It was a love story about how romantic relationships seldom last. The message was driven home with an old joke about a guy who thinks he’s a chicken and his friend won’t turn him in because he needs the eggs. That was a lot to digest back then for a moviegoer just turning twenty.

The 1977 Best Picture Oscar winner had all these wonderful moments — boy meets girl; girl plays tennis badly; boy “lerves” girl; life and California complicate things; uncertainty sets in; fun relationship turns into a dead shark. Allen’s character writes himself a happy ending anyway. Moral of the story: try to correct in art what you didn’t get right in life. The other important part: hold dear those extraordinary moments along the way.

In the end, boy and girl catch up in a Manhattan diner and, wouldn’t you know it, remain true friends. Cue the last few notes of “Old Times.” This modern romance wasn’t “Sleeper,” or “Love and Death,” it was much more profound. If only I had Marshall MacLuhan here with me now to explain it all, you’d see what I mean.

Bottom line: if you can meet your Diane Keaton along the way, you will never run out of eggs. An Oscar winner for the role, the actress was apparently just playing herself (real surname: Hall; real nickname: “Annie”). The actress and the character, however, were such original creations, in style, substance and spirit.

Keaton’s death October 11 at 79 caught many of us by surprise. I did not have her going before Woody, nearly 90, in the pool. Alvy Singer was the one that was obsessed with death.

That same year at the movies, Keaton turned Annie Hall inside out with a disturbing role in a very dark film, “Looking for Mr. Goodbar.” Keaton deserved her Oscar just for her performance in the Woody Allen triumph, but showing such dramatic range had to have helped her chances. She never landed the same kind of double whammy in one year again but roles in all three “Godfather” films as well as “Reds” kept her A-list. A later favourite for me would be 2005’s “Something’s Gotta Give.” Her TV credits go all the way back to episodes of Love American Style and Night Gallery in 1970.

Keaton appeared at a TCA press tour session to promote the 2002 Alliance-Atlantis TV-movie “Crossing Over.” This was her directorial debut. Besides Jennifer Jason-Leigh, her co-star in the film was the Canadian-American actor Maury Chaykin. When I went up on stage and approached Keaton after the session she was only too happy to sing Chaykin’s praises. In 1995, she directed him in “Unsung Heroes” (the perfect title for a Chaykin film), a 1995 movie also starring Andie MacDowell, John Turturro and Michael Richards. Keaton and Chaykin worked on four films together, going all the way back to another Toronto-lensed production, 1994’s “Mrs. Soffel.”

The point of the Chaykin story is that Keaton, even in the briefest press scrum exchange, was exactly who you hoped she would be — enthusiastic, present, generous, spontaneous, humble and an advocate for others. She was right about Chaykin, too. Fondly remembered for Less Than Kind, the man held his own opposite everybody from Annette Benning and Jeremy Irons (“Being Julia”) to The Trailer Park Boys.

Besides all her acting roles, Keaton, a native of Los Angeles, directed several projects, including episodes of Twin Peaks, China Beach and some music videos showcasing Belinda Carlisle. She and Allen worked on eight films together, including 1978’s “Manhattan”, “Radio Days” (1987), and their first. “Play it Again, Sam” (1972). She never married, but Allen, Warren Beatty and Al Pacino were among her Hollywood romances.

And talk about energy — Keaton waited until her fifties to become a mom. Condolences to her two children, her extended family and friends and everyone else who fell in love with Annie Hall.