An actress who has surprised many critics with the depth of her talent in a film career that has been going strong for nearly three decades. Originally a discovery of WOODY ALLEN who directed her in many of his films of the 1970s, she emerged in her own right as an effective dramatic actress in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s. Tall, gawky, with a vulnerable off-center style, Diane Keaton has slowly become one of Hollywood's major actresses. Born Diane Hall to a middle-class family in California, she dropped out of college to become an actress. After traveling to New York, she studied at the well-known Neighborhood Playhouse. Her rise was meteoric by show-business standards; after mere months of playing in stock, she won a modest role in a show that became the hottest ticket on Broadway during the 1960s, Hair. She also had the job of understudying the lead, eventually inheriting the role in 1968 after the star left the show.
As big a break as starring in Hair might have been, it wasn't half as big as when Woody Allen tapped her to be the female lead in his Broadway production of Play It Again, Sam in 1969. The two subsequently became lovers, and he later featured her in a great many of his films. Before Allen introduced her to filmgoers, however, Diane Keaton made her movie debut in a small role in Lovers and Other Strangers (1970) and played a more important supporting role as AL PACINO's wife in The Godfather (1972), later reprising her role in the sequel, The Godfather, Part II (1974).
Her real film fame, however, came not from FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA's hits but from her neurotic and endearing performance in the film version of Play It Again, Sam (1972). Critics and audiences loved the film and, though it was clearly a Woody Allen vehicle, Diane Keaton was singled out for considerable praise. Though she starred in other non-Allen films during the 1970s, such as I Will, I Will . . . for Now (1976) and Harry and Walter Go to New York (1976), her early reputation was built on her costarring leads in the Woody Allen classics Sleeper (1973), Love and Death (1975), Interiors (1978), and Manhattan (1979). Her most important Allen film was Annie Hall (1977), which was loosely based on Diane Keaton's relationship with her director - even to the point of giving the title character her actual last name. She won the Best Actress Oscar for her performance in that film, while also starting a fashion trend known as the "Annie Hall look."
In the same year as Annie Hall, Diane Keaton also starred in what was then her most important dramatic role, the lead in Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977). The provocative and muchdiscussed film concerning sexual repression highlighted Diane Keaton's acting versatility and surprised a great many critics. After her amicable breakup with Woody Allen, she went on to make mostly dramatic movies, including Reds (1981) - a hit romantic film of ideas with WARREN BEATTY - and a powerful, critically acclaimed movie about divorce, Shoot the Moon (1982). But then she hit a rough spot in her career with two major bombs, The Little Drummer Girl (1984) and Mrs. Soffel (1984). Diane Keaton bounced back, though, with several highly regarded films, among them Crimes of the Heart (1986), Baby Boom (1987), and The Good Mother (1988). In the late 1980s, Diane Keaton also made her directorial debut with the rather controversial Heaven (1987), putting together a melange of interviews and film clips concerning people's ideas of the hereafter.
In The Lemon Sisters (1990), Diane Keaton was one of three women performers who struggle to buy their own club and to deal with the men in their lives; this sisterhood act would be reflected in her other films, such as Marvin's Room (1996) in which she has to deal with sister Meryl Streep. In The First Wives Club (1996), she is one of three women who struggle to deal with the aftermath of divorce, but this time, the three (including Diane Keaton, Bette Midler, and GOLDIE HAWN) are very successful, as was the film, especially with women. Reuniting professionally with Woody Allen for Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993), Diane Keaton was nominated for a Golden Globe Best Actress award. She also earned an Oscar nomination for Best Actress for her performance in Marvin's Room.
Diane Keaton also played her share of mother roles during the 1990s. She was the mother in Father of the Bride (1991), starring STEVE MARTIN, who completely took over the film. In Father of the Bride: Part Two (1995), she had a sort of revenge, becoming pregnant and presenting Steve Martin with yet another problem. As the uptight mother of a mentally handicapped daughter in The Other Sister (1998), she was convincing and moving. Other roles during the 1990s included her final turn as the WASP wife to a Mafia don in The Godfather, Part 3 (1990), and Hanging Up (2000) with MEG RYAN; Diane Keaton played Ryan's older sister, a high-powered New York magazine editor. In 2001 she was one of a large cast wasted in Town and Country. Diane Keaton seems to have been successful in making the generational leap and continuing to find good roles, particularly in the critically lauded Something's Gotta Give (2003), for which she was nominated for an Oscar.
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1. Don Ameche was one of the leading men of 20th Century Fox
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