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Plenty of accomplished actresses have starred in rom-coms. Usually, should they desire to win an Oscar, they have to reach for weightier characters. Diane Keaton, who died unexpectedly, followed a reverse trajectory and pulled it off with seamless ease. Her debut significant performance was in the classic The Godfather, as dramatic an cinematic masterpiece as ever produced. However, concurrently, she reprised the part of Linda, the love interest of a geeky protagonist, in a movie version of Broadway’s Play It Again, Sam. She persistently switched heavy films with funny love stories throughout the ’70s, and the lighter fare that won her an Oscar for outstanding actress, transforming the category forever.

The Academy Award Part

The award was for the film Annie Hall, co-written and directed by Allen, with Keaton as the title character, a component of the couple’s failed relationship. Woody and Diane had been in a romantic relationship prior to filming, and remained close friends throughout her life; in interviews, Keaton had characterized Annie as a perfect image of herself, as seen by Allen. One could assume, then, to believe her portrayal meant being herself. But there’s too much range in Keaton’s work, both between her Godfather performance and her comedic collaborations and inside Annie Hall alone, to discount her skill with rom-coms as merely exuding appeal – even if she was, of course, tremendously charming.

Evolving Comedy

Annie Hall famously served as the director’s evolution between more gag-based broad comedies and a more naturalistic style. Consequently, it has plenty of gags, imaginative scenes, and a freewheeling patchwork of a love story recollection mixed with painful truths into a ill-fated romance. Likewise, Keaton, oversaw a change in U.S. romantic comedies, playing neither the rapid-fire comic lead or the sexy scatterbrain famous from the ’50s. Instead, she fuses and merges elements from each to invent a novel style that still reads as oddly contemporary, cutting her confidence short with nervous pauses.

See, as an example the moment when Annie and Alvy initially hit it off after a match of tennis, stumbling through reciprocal offers for a car trip (despite the fact that only one of them has a car). The dialogue is quick, but zig-zags around unpredictably, with Keaton navigating her nervousness before concluding with of that famous phrase, a phrase that encapsulates her quirky unease. The film manifests that feeling in the next scene, as she makes blasé small talk while navigating wildly through Manhattan streets. Later, she centers herself performing the song in a nightclub.

Complexity and Freedom

This is not evidence of Annie being unstable. Throughout the movie, there’s a depth to her gentle eccentricity – her hippie-hangover willingness to sample narcotics, her fear of crustaceans and arachnids, her refusal to be manipulated by the protagonist’s tries to mold her into someone outwardly grave (which for him means focused on dying). Initially, Annie might seem like an strange pick to receive acclaim; she’s the romantic lead in a story filtered through a man’s eyes, and the protagonists’ trajectory doesn’t bend toward either changing enough accommodate the other. But Annie evolves, in aspects clear and mysterious. She merely avoids becoming a more compatible mate for Alvy. Numerous follow-up films borrowed the surface traits – nervous habits, eccentric styles – not fully copying Annie’s ultimate independence.

Ongoing Legacy and Senior Characters

Maybe Keaton was wary of that pattern. Post her professional partnership with Woody finished, she paused her lighthearted roles; her movie Baby Boom is really her only one from the whole decade of the eighties. However, in her hiatus, the character Annie, the character perhaps moreso than the free-form film, served as a blueprint for the category. Actress Meg Ryan, for example, owes most of her rom-com career to Diane’s talent to embody brains and whimsy at once. This rendered Keaton like a permanent rom-com queen despite her real roles being married characters (be it joyfully, as in Father of the Bride, or not as much, as in The First Wives Club) and/or moms (see that Christmas movie or Because I Said So) than single gals falling in love. Even in her comeback with Woody Allen, they’re a established married pair united more deeply by humorous investigations – and she slips into that role easily, beautifully.

Yet Diane experienced another major rom-com hit in the year 2003 with that Nancy Meyers movie, as a playwright in love with a older playboy (Jack Nicholson, naturally). The outcome? Her last Academy Award nod, and a complete niche of romantic tales where senior actresses (often portrayed by famous faces, but still!) reclaim their love lives. One factor her passing feels so sudden is that Diane continued creating such films up until recently, a constant multiplex presence. Now fans are turning from expecting her roles to understanding the huge impact she was on the romantic comedy as it exists today. Should it be difficult to recall modern equivalents of such actresses who emulate her path, that’s probably because it’s seldom for a star of her caliber to dedicate herself to a category that’s mostly been streaming fodder for a long time.

An Exceptional Impact

Consider: there are a dozen performing women who have been nominated multiple times. 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