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Plenty of accomplished female actors have starred in love stories with humor. Ordinarily, when aiming to receive Oscar recognition, they have to reach for more serious roles. Diane Keaton, who died unexpectedly, charted a different course and made it look effortless grace. Her initial breakout part was in the classic The Godfather, as dramatic an film classic as has ever been made. Yet in the same year, she returned to the role of Linda, the love interest of a geeky protagonist, in a movie version of the theatrical production Play It Again, Sam. She continued to alternate heavy films with funny love stories during the 1970s, and the comedies that won her an Oscar for best actress, altering the genre for good.

The Oscar-Winning Role

That Oscar was for Annie Hall, co-written and directed by Allen, with Keaton portraying Annie, part of the film’s broken romance. Allen and Keaton were once romantically involved before production, and remained close friends throughout her life; in interviews, Keaton had characterized Annie as an idealized version of herself, through Allen’s eyes. It would be easy, then, to believe her portrayal involves doing what came naturally. Yet her breadth in her acting, from her Godfather role and her funny films with Allen and within Annie Hall itself, to discount her skill with rom-coms as simply turning on the charm – although she remained, of course, tremendously charming.

A Transition in Style

Annie Hall famously served as Allen’s transition between slapstick-oriented movies and a more naturalistic style. Therefore, it has numerous jokes, dreamlike moments, and a improvised tapestry of a love story recollection in between some stinging insights into a doomed romantic relationship. Likewise, Keaton, led an evolution in American rom-coms, embodying neither the rapid-fire comic lead or the bombshell ditz popularized in the 1950s. Instead, she mixes and matches aspects of both to invent a novel style that feels modern even now, interrupting her own boldness with uncertain moments.

Observe, for instance the scene where Annie and Alvy Singer initially bond after a game on the courts, stumbling through reciprocal offers for a lift (despite the fact that only just one drives). The exchange is rapid, but veers erratically, with Keaton maneuvering through her nervousness before ending up stuck of her whimsical line, a phrase that encapsulates her quirky unease. The movie physicalizes that tone in the following sequence, as she engages in casual chat while driving recklessly through Manhattan streets. Later, she finds her footing singing It Had to Be You in a cabaret.

Complexity and Freedom

These are not instances of the character’s unpredictability. Across the film, there’s a dimensionality to her light zaniness – her post-hippie openness to experiment with substances, her panic over lobsters and spiders, her refusal to be manipulated by Alvy’s efforts to turn her into someone outwardly grave (which for him means preoccupied with mortality). At first, Annie could appear like an odd character to receive acclaim; she plays the female lead in a film told from a male perspective, and the main pair’s journey fails to result in sufficient transformation to suit each other. But Annie evolves, in aspects clear and mysterious. She just doesn’t become a more suitable partner for Alvy. Plenty of later rom-coms borrowed the surface traits – nervous habits, odd clothing – without quite emulating her core self-reliance.

Lasting Influence and Later Roles

Possibly she grew hesitant of that pattern. After her working relationship with Woody finished, she stepped away from romantic comedies; the film Baby Boom is practically her single outing from the entirety of the 1980s. However, in her hiatus, the film Annie Hall, the role possibly more than the free-form film, became a model for the category. Actress Meg Ryan, for example, is largely indebted for her comedic roles to Diane’s talent to play smart and flibbertigibbet simultaneously. This cast Keaton as like a permanent rom-com queen despite her real roles being more wives (if contentedly, as in that family comedy, or not as much, as in that ensemble comedy) and/or parental figures (see the holiday film The Family Stone or the comedy Because I Said So) than independent ladies in love. Even in her reunion with Woody Allen, they’re a established married pair brought closer together by humorous investigations – and she slips into that role effortlessly, gracefully.

Yet Diane experienced another major rom-com hit in the year 2003 with the film Something’s Gotta Give, as a writer in love with a older playboy (actor Jack Nicholson, naturally). The result? Her final Oscar nomination, and a complete niche of romantic tales where older women (often portrayed by famous faces, but still!) take charge of their destinies. Part of the reason her death seems like such a shock is that Diane continued creating such films just last year, a frequent big-screen star. Now audiences will be pivoting from assuming her availability to realizing what an enormous influence she was on the rom-com genre as it exists today. If it’s harder to think of modern equivalents of those earlier stars who similarly follow in Keaton’s footsteps, that’s likely since it’s uncommon for an actor of her talent to commit herself to a style that’s mostly been streaming fodder for a while now.

A Special Contribution

Reflect: there are 10 living female actors who earned several Oscar nods. It’s unusual for a single part to start in a light love story, let alone half of them, as was the example of Keaton. {Because her