Diane Keaton: A singular star who was uniquely dedicated to her craft

Posted On October 12, 2025October 12, 2025

With the sad loss of Diane Keaton, the world has been forced to say goodbye to one of Hollywood’s truest originals.

In a career that spanned five decades, Keaton did everything there was to do in the movies, and she did it all while refusing to be anything other than herself. For starters, she won the Academy Award for ‘Best Actress’ for her iconic performance in Annie Hall, in the process influencing generations of women.

Embracing an androgynous, bohemian approach, Keaton became an icon. Her legacy didn’t decrease; she then starred in beloved comedy classics like Father of the Bride and The First Wives Club, and showed no signs of slowing down her output, even in her late 70s. There was also the small matter of her vital role in a series of films often dubbed the pinnacle of Hollywood filmmaking: The Godfather trilogy.

In truth, it would be an understatement to say that Keaton’s approach to her career was uniquely singular. She rarely seemed to be motivated by starring in the biggest hits or chasing money. Instead, she made movies she cared about, and if one or two happened to catch on with the public every few years, then all the better. She also realised early on that she preferred making comedies to flexing her dramatic muscles, even though she was equally great at both disciplines. “I feel more comfortable with comedy,” she explained in 2015. “I love being awkward or falling in love and laughing, or touching someone’s face and enjoying it. I love the fun that you have when you’re in a comic movie.”

This love for embracing her quirky side and making audiences laugh is certainly why, according to the woman herself, the film she remembers most fondly in her entire storied career isn’t Annie Hall or The Godfather or any of her other hugely acclaimed pictures. Instead, she placed Something’s Gotta Give, the charming Nancy Meyers romcom she made in 2003, at the top of her pile.

In her memoir Then Again, Keaton gushed about the movie she happily labelled her “favourite film”, and doubled down whenever given the opportunity. “It’s the best of all possible worlds for me,” she grinned. “Not only do I get to kiss Keanu Reeves and have a big romance with him, but I also get to have the same experience with Jack! He’s the original bad boy, so that’s about as exciting as it gets.” Save your Oscar bait pictures; Keaton would much rather make relatable movies that audiences of all ages get a kick out of.

Having said that, there can be no doubt that Keaton’s approach to her craft was extremely disciplined. In fact, it was so meticulous and studied that, as revealed by Nicholson, it was another aspect of her personality that made her unique among other Hollywood performers. “She approaches a script sort of like a play,” he explained, “in that she has the entire script memorised before you start doing the movie.” Nicholson, a man who has worked with almost all the Hollywood greats of the last five decades, concluded that this set Keaton apart in a big way. “I don’t know any other actors doing that,” he claimed.

Keaton’s singular approach to her work also applied to her private life, where she marched to the beat of her own drum. She never married, despite having a string of relationships with a who’s who of Hollywood leading men, including Al Pacino, Warren Beatty, and Woody Allen. To her, becoming someone’s wife just never sounded appealing, so she never gave in to societal pressure to tie the knot.

“I’m really glad I didn’t get married,” she told People magazine in 2019. “I’m an oddball. I remember in high school, this guy came up to me and said, ‘One day you’re going to make a good wife.’ And I thought, ‘I don’t want to be a wife.’” Refusing to consider marriage didn’t mean Keaton rejected family life, though, and she became a mother when she adopted her two beloved children, Dexter and Duke, in 1996 and 2001.

For my money, though, the best example of Keaton being a dyed-in-the-wool original was her, shall we say, distinctive method of drinking red wine. Unlike most folks, you see, Keaton liked to gulp her red from a glass filled with ice, which made the heads of wine snobs everywhere spin. To their horror, she then marketed her own wine, simply named The Keaton, which boasted on its label that it was intended to be lovingly sloshed over ice. She once joked, “It’s not fancy, but neither am I,” and if that’s not just one more reason to love her, then I don’t know what is.

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