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Plenty of accomplished female actors have performed in rom-coms. Typically, if they want to earn an Academy Award, they need to shift for dramatic parts. Diane Keaton, who passed away recently, took an opposite path and pulled it off with disarmingly natural. Her first major film role was in the classic The Godfather, as dramatic an American masterpiece as ever produced. But that same year, she revisited the character of the character Linda, the love interest of a geeky protagonist, in a film adaptation of the stage play Play It Again, Sam. She persistently switched serious dramas with romantic comedies across the seventies, and the lighter fare that won her an Oscar for leading actress, changing the genre permanently.

The Academy Award Part

The Oscar statuette was for the film Annie Hall, helmed and co-scripted by Woody Allen, with Keaton as the title character, part of the film’s broken romance. Woody and Diane were once romantically involved prior to filming, and continued as pals 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 required little effort. But there’s too much range in Keaton’s work, contrasting her dramatic part and her comedic collaborations and within Annie Hall itself, to dismiss her facility with romantic comedy as just being charming – though she was, of course, incredibly appealing.

Shifting Genres

The film famously functioned as Allen’s transition between more gag-based broad comedies and a realistic approach. As such, it has plenty of gags, dreamlike moments, and a loose collage of a relationship memoir alongside sharp observations into a fated love affair. Keaton, similarly, presides over a transition in U.S. romantic comedies, embodying neither the rapid-fire comic lead or the glamorous airhead famous from the ’50s. On the contrary, she blends and combines traits from both to create something entirely new that feels modern even now, interrupting her own boldness with her own false-start hesitations.

Watch, for example the moment when Annie and Alvy initially hit it off after a game on the courts, fumbling over ping-ponging invitations for a ride (although only just one drives). The banter is fast, but meanders unexpectedly, with Keaton navigating her own discomfort before concluding with of that famous phrase, a words that embody her nervous whimsy. The movie physicalizes that sensibility in the following sequence, as she engages in casual chat while operating the car carelessly through Manhattan streets. Later, she centers herself delivering the tune in a club venue.

Depth and Autonomy

These are not instances of the character’s unpredictability. During the entire story, there’s a dimensionality to her gentle eccentricity – her post-hippie openness to sample narcotics, her fear of crustaceans and arachnids, her unwillingness to be shaped by Alvy’s attempts to shape her into someone more superficially serious (which for him means preoccupied with mortality). In the beginning, Annie might seem like an odd character to earn an award; she plays the female lead in a film told from a male perspective, and the main pair’s journey doesn’t bend toward either changing enough to make it work. But Annie evolves, in manners visible and hidden. She merely avoids becoming a more suitable partner for Alvy. Many subsequent love stories stole the superficial stuff – anxious quirks, odd clothing – without quite emulating Annie’s ultimate independence.

Enduring Impact and Mature Parts

Maybe Keaton was wary of that tendency. Post her professional partnership with Allen concluded, she stepped away from romantic comedies; Baby Boom is practically her single outing from the entirety of the 1980s. But during her absence, the film Annie Hall, the character perhaps moreso than the free-form film, emerged as a template for the category. Meg Ryan, for example, owes most of her rom-com career to Diane’s talent to portray intelligence and flightiness together. This cast Keaton as like a timeless love story icon while she was in fact portraying matrimonial parts (if contentedly, as in the movie Father of the Bride, or not as much, as in The First Wives Club) and/or moms (see The Family Stone or that mother-daughter story) than single gals falling in love. Even in her comeback with Woody Allen, they’re a long-married couple drawn nearer by humorous investigations – and she slips into that role effortlessly, gracefully.

Yet Diane experienced an additional romantic comedy success in 2003 with that Nancy Meyers movie, as a dramatist in love with a older playboy (the star Jack Nicholson, naturally). What happened? One more Oscar recognition, and a complete niche of romantic tales where mature females (typically acted by celebrities, but still!) reclaim their love lives. Part of the reason her loss is so startling is that she kept producing those movies just last year, a frequent big-screen star. Now fans are turning from assuming her availability to realizing what an enormous influence she was on the funny romance as it is recognized. Should it be difficult to recall modern equivalents of Meg Ryan or Goldie Hawn who similarly follow in Keaton’s footsteps, that’s probably because it’s seldom for a star of her caliber to dedicate herself to a genre that’s mostly been streaming fodder for a recent period.

A Unique Legacy

Consider: there are ten active actresses who received at least four best actress nominations. It’s rare for one of those roles to originate in a romantic comedy, let alone half of them, as was the example of Keaton. {Because her