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Numerous great female actors have starred in rom-coms. Usually, should they desire to earn an Academy Award, they need to shift for more serious roles. Diane Keaton, whose recent passing occurred, followed a reverse trajectory and pulled it off with seamless ease. Her debut significant performance was in The Godfather, as weighty an American masterpiece as has ever been made. Yet in the same year, she revisited the character of the character Linda, the love interest of a geeky protagonist, in a cinematic take of the theatrical production Play It Again, Sam. She continued to alternate heavy films with romantic comedies across the seventies, and the lighter fare that secured her the Oscar for leading actress, changing the genre permanently.

The Academy Award Part

The Oscar statuette was for the film Annie Hall, co-written and directed by Allen, with Keaton in the lead role, one half of the movie’s fractured love story. Allen and Keaton dated previously before production, and remained close friends for the rest of her life; when speaking publicly, Keaton portrayed Annie as a perfect image of herself, through Allen’s eyes. It would be easy, then, to think her acting required little effort. Yet her breadth in her performances, both between her Godfather performance and her comedic collaborations and within Annie Hall itself, to underestimate her talent with funny romances as merely exuding appeal – even if she was, of course, highly charismatic.

Evolving Comedy

Annie Hall notably acted as the director’s evolution between slapstick-oriented movies and a authentic manner. Consequently, it has plenty of gags, fantasy sequences, and a freewheeling patchwork of a romantic memory in between some stinging insights into a fated love affair. Keaton, similarly, presides over a transition in U.S. romantic comedies, playing neither the screwball-era speed-talker or the sexy scatterbrain popularized in the 1950s. Rather, she mixes and matches elements from each to invent a novel style that still reads as oddly contemporary, interrupting her own boldness with her own false-start hesitations.

Observe, for instance the moment when Annie and Alvy initially bond after a match of tennis, fumbling over ping-ponging invitations for a ride (even though only a single one owns a vehicle). The exchange is rapid, but meanders unexpectedly, with Keaton navigating her own discomfort before winding up in a cul-de-sac of that famous phrase, a expression that captures her anxious charm. The story embodies that tone in the next scene, as she engages in casual chat while driving recklessly through Manhattan streets. Afterward, she centers herself singing It Had to Be You in a club venue.

Dimensionality and Independence

These are not instances of Annie being unstable. During the entire story, there’s a depth to her playful craziness – her hippie-hangover willingness to experiment with substances, her anxiety about sea creatures and insects, her resistance to control by Alvy’s efforts to shape her into someone more superficially serious (in his view, that signifies preoccupied with mortality). In the beginning, the character may look like an strange pick to win an Oscar; she’s the romantic lead in a movie seen from a man’s point of view, and the main pair’s journey doesn’t bend toward either changing enough accommodate the other. But Annie evolves, in aspects clear and mysterious. She merely avoids becoming a more suitable partner for her co-star. Numerous follow-up films took the obvious elements – nervous habits, eccentric styles – without quite emulating her core self-reliance.

Ongoing Legacy and Senior Characters

Possibly she grew hesitant of that pattern. Following her collaboration with Allen ended, she stepped away from romantic comedies; her movie Baby Boom is essentially her sole entry from the complete 1980s period. But during her absence, Annie Hall, the role possibly more than the free-form film, emerged as a template for the genre. Actress Meg Ryan, for example, owes most of her rom-com career to Keaton’s ability to portray intelligence and flightiness together. This made Keaton seem like a timeless love story icon despite her real roles being more wives (whether happily, as in that family comedy, or not as much, as in The First Wives Club) and/or moms (see that Christmas movie or Because I Said So) than unattached women finding romance. Even in her comeback with Allen, they’re a long-married couple united more deeply by humorous investigations – and she eases into the part smoothly, wonderfully.

However, Keaton also enjoyed another major rom-com hit in two thousand three with the film Something’s Gotta Give, as a writer in love with a younger-dating cad (actor Jack Nicholson, naturally). The outcome? Her last Academy Award nod, and a whole subgenre of romantic tales where older women (typically acted by celebrities, but still!) reclaim their love lives. A key element her death seems like such a shock is that Diane continued creating such films up until recently, a frequent big-screen star. Now audiences will be pivoting from expecting her roles to understanding the huge impact she was on the funny romance as it exists today. Is it tough to imagine present-day versions of Meg Ryan or Goldie Hawn who similarly follow in Keaton’s footsteps, that’s likely since it’s seldom for a star of Keaton’s skill to devote herself to a style that’s often just online content for a long time.

A Special Contribution

Ponder: there are ten active actresses who have been nominated multiple times. It’s rare for one of those roles to begin in a rom-com, not to mention multiple, as was the case for Keaton. {Because her