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Many great actresses have performed in rom-coms. Ordinarily, if they want to receive Oscar recognition, they must turn for weightier characters. The late Diane Keaton, whose recent passing occurred, took an opposite path and made it look seamless ease. Her initial breakout part was in the classic The Godfather, as dramatic an American masterpiece as has ever been made. But that same year, she returned to the role of Linda, the love interest of a geeky protagonist, in a cinematic take of Broadway’s Play It Again, Sam. She regularly juggled intense dramas with funny love stories during the 1970s, and it was the latter that secured her the Oscar for leading actress, altering the genre for good.

The Academy Award Part

That Oscar was for the film Annie Hall, written and directed by Woody Allen, with Keaton portraying Annie, one half of the movie’s fractured love story. The director and star were once romantically involved before making the film, and remained close friends throughout her life; during conversations, Keaton described Annie as a perfect image of herself, from Allen’s perspective. One could assume, then, to think her acting meant being herself. But there’s too much range in her acting, both between her Godfather performance and her funny films with Allen and throughout that very movie, to dismiss her facility with rom-coms as simply turning on the charm – although she remained, of course, incredibly appealing.

Evolving Comedy

The film famously functioned as Allen’s transition between more gag-based broad comedies and a more naturalistic style. Therefore, it has plenty of gags, dreamlike moments, and a loose collage of a love story recollection mixed with painful truths into a fated love affair. In a similar vein, Diane, led an evolution in American rom-coms, portraying neither the fast-talking screwball type or the sexy scatterbrain popularized in the 1950s. On the contrary, she fuses and merges elements from each to invent a novel style that seems current today, halting her assertiveness with her own false-start hesitations.

Watch, for example the scene where Annie and Alvy Singer first connect after a match of tennis, fumbling over ping-ponging invitations for a lift (although only just one drives). The dialogue is quick, but zig-zags around unpredictably, with Keaton maneuvering through her own discomfort before concluding with of “la di da”, a expression that captures her quirky unease. The film manifests that tone in the following sequence, as she makes blasé small talk while navigating wildly through city avenues. Afterward, she centers herself performing the song in a club venue.

Depth and Autonomy

This is not evidence of Annie acting erratic. During the entire story, there’s a complexity to her light zaniness – her lingering counterculture curiosity 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 (for him, that implies death-obsessed). At first, Annie might seem like an strange pick to receive acclaim; she is the love interest in a movie seen from a man’s point of view, and the central couple’s arc doesn’t bend toward sufficient transformation accommodate the other. But Annie evolves, in aspects clear and mysterious. She simply fails to turn into a better match for the male lead. Plenty of later rom-coms borrowed the surface traits – neurotic hang-ups, odd clothing – failing to replicate her core self-reliance.

Enduring Impact and Mature Parts

Maybe Keaton was wary of that tendency. After her working relationship with Allen concluded, she paused her lighthearted roles; the film Baby Boom is essentially her sole entry from the complete 1980s period. However, in her hiatus, the character Annie, the persona even more than the free-form film, served as a blueprint for the category. Meg Ryan, for example, credits much of her love story success to Keaton’s ability to embody brains and whimsy at once. This cast Keaton as like a timeless love story icon despite her real roles being matrimonial parts (be it joyfully, as in that family comedy, or more strained, as in the film The First Wives Club) and/or parental figures (see that Christmas movie or Because I Said So) than single gals falling in love. Even during her return with the director, they’re a seasoned spouses drawn nearer by comic amateur sleuthing – and she slips into that role easily, beautifully.

However, Keaton also enjoyed another major rom-com hit in two thousand three with the film Something’s Gotta Give, as a playwright in love with a man who dates younger women (Jack Nicholson, naturally). The outcome? One more Oscar recognition, and a whole subgenre of love stories where older women (often portrayed by famous faces, but still!) reassert their romantic and/or social agency. A key element her death seems like such a shock is that Keaton was still making these stories as recently as last year, a constant multiplex presence. Now audiences will be pivoting from taking that presence for granted to grasping the significant effect she was on the rom-com genre as it exists today. Should it be difficult to recall contemporary counterparts of those earlier stars who emulate her path, the reason may be it’s uncommon for an actor of Keaton’s skill to devote herself to a category that’s mostly been streaming fodder for a while now.

A Special Contribution

Ponder: there are 10 living female actors 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 example of Keaton. {Because her