Celebrity
Diane Keaton, Beloved Star Of “Father Of The Bride” And “The First Wives Club,” Dies At 79
It’s Diane Keaton’s death. Her age was 79.
The renowned actress passed away in California, according to PEOPLE. According to a family spokesman, her loved ones have requested privacy and additional information is not currently accessible.
Keaton’s involvement in The Godfather movies and her partnerships with director Woody Allen helped her become well-known in the 1970s. Her performance in the 1977 film Annie Hall earned her an Oscar for Best Actress. Throughout her lengthy career, she worked with filmmaker Nancy Meyers on several projects, including The First Wives Club and the Book Club franchise.
The actress was the eldest of four children and was born Diane Hall in Los Angeles in 1946. Her mother stayed at home while her father worked as a civil engineer.
Still, Keaton thought her mother dreamed of something bigger. “Secretly in her heart of hearts she probably wanted to be an entertainer of some kind,” the actress told PEOPLE in 2004. “She sang. She played the piano. She was beautiful. She was my advocate.”
Keaton participated in plays during her high school years and went on to study drama in college after graduating in 1964. However, she quickly left school and relocated to New York in an attempt to break into the theater industry. Since there was already a Diane Hall registered with Actors’ Equity, she chose to use her mother’s maiden name, Keaton, as her professional name.
In 1968, Keaton was cast in Broadway’s Hair as the understudy for Sheila. In 2017, Keaton told PEOPLE that she struggled with bulimia during this time after the director of the show told her she needed to lose weight, though she didn’t blame him for her illness. “Believe me, it had to do with an overabundant need for more. Too much. It was a mental illness,” she said.
“I became a master at hiding. Hiding any evidence — how do you make sure no one knows? You live a lifestyle that is very strange. You’re living a lie,” she explained about her illness. She eventually recovered thanks to therapy, but said bulimia also robbed her of the ability to enjoy her time on Broadway.
After that, Keaton starred in Allen’s 1969 Broadway production of Play It Again, Sam. For the part, she was nominated for a Tony.
Her major break came when Francis Ford Coppola cast her as Kay Adams, the girlfriend of Al Pacino’s Michael Corleone, in the 1972 picture The Godfather. She had made her cinematic debut in the 1970 film Lovers and Other Strangers. Keaton didn’t read the best-selling book before her audition, so she wasn’t fully aware of the plot of the movie, which was based on Mario Puzo’s book.
“I think the kindest thing that someone’s ever done for me … is that I got cast to be in The Godfather and I didn’t even read it. I didn’t know a single thing,” she told PEOPLE in 2022. “I just was going around auditioning. I think that was amazing for me. And then I had to kind of read the book.”
The movie was a huge hit and took home the Best Picture Oscar. In the successful and Best Picture-winning 1974 film The Godfather Part II, Keaton returned to her role. She made a comeback for the last movie, The Godfather Part III, in 1990.
Keaton also continued to collaborate with Allen, appearing in the film version of Play It Again, Sam, released in 1972, 1973’s Sleeper and 1975’s Love and Death. Despite her early success, Keaton’s insecurities still plagued her, and she would never watch her own films. “I just don’t like the way I look and sound,” she told PEOPLE in 1975.
Keaton played the titular role in Allen’s 1977 film Annie Hall. For the part, she was awarded the Oscar for Best Actress. The movie solidified the actress’ status as a style icon, and Annie’s outfit was modeled after Keaton’s own, complete with structured pants, vests, and menswear. Many conjectured that Keaton and Allen’s relationship served as the inspiration for the film. “It’s not true, but there are elements of truth in it,” she said in a 1977 interview with The New York Times.
Allen and Keaton would work together once more in the films Interiors (1978), Manhattan (1979), and Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993). She also stood up for Allen after his stepdaughter Dylan Farrow accused him of sexual abuse. In 2014, she declared to The Guardian, “I love him.”
Keaton’s other film roles included 1977’s Looking for Mr. Goodbar, 1981’s Reds, 1982’s Shoot the Moon and 1984’s The Little Drummer Girl. She worked with Meyers for the first time on 1987’s Baby Boom. They would reunite three more times: in 1991’s Father of the Bride, 1995’s Father of the Bride Part II and 2003’s Something’s Gotta Give, which garnered another Oscar nom for Keaton. Asked which of these projects she loved the most, Keaton told Vulture in 2020, “Honestly, you can think it’s sappy, but I love the Father of the Bride movies. They were so touching.”
Keaton costarred with Bette Midler and Goldie Hawn in the 1996 film The First Wives Club, which told the story of three women whose husbands had abandoned them for younger women. All three of them sang Lesley Gore’s “You Don’t Own Me” as the farce came to a legendary close. Because Hawn and Midler were “really amazing actresses,” Keaton said to The Hollywood Reporter in 2023 that she was “always kind of anxious and a little worried” while filming it.
The Family Stone, Because I Said So, Finding Dory, Book Club (and its sequel), and Poms were among Keaton’s latter roles. She starred in HBO’s 2016 miniseries The Young Pope, marking a rare TV appearance. In addition, Keaton directed an episode of Twin Peaks, the documentary Heaven in 1987, and Hanging Up in 2000.
Keaton featured in Justin Bieber’s “Ghost” music video in 2021. She was also a frequent Instagram user, sharing life updates, thoughts about her friendships and work, and compliments for the people she cared about.
Looking back on her career, Keaton told PEOPLE in 2019, “I don’t know anything, and I haven’t learned. Getting older hasn’t made me wiser. Without acting I would have been a misfit.”
Keaton never married. “Today I was thinking, I’m the only one in my generation of actresses who has been a single woman all her life,” she explained to PEOPLE in 2019. “I’m really glad I didn’t get married. 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. No.’”
She was romantically linked to Allen, Pacino and Warren Beatty throughout her life. “Talent is so damn attractive,” she noted to PEOPLE.
Keaton had two children, daughter Dexter and son Duke, whom she adopted in 1996 and 2001, respectively. “Motherhood was not an urge I couldn’t resist, it was more like a thought I’d been thinking for a very long time. So I plunged in,” she told Ladies’ Home Journal in 2008.
Keaton’s children survive her.
Here’s what is confirmed:
- Diane Keaton has dealt with skin cancer over many years, including basal cell carcinoma (diagnosed around age 21) and squamous cell carcinoma, which required surgery.
- She has publicly said that skin cancer has “dogged her entire adult life.”
No matter what took her from us, her legacy and spirit will live forever through her incredible body of work. Rest in peace, Diane.
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