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Many accomplished performers have performed in rom-coms. Ordinarily, when aiming to receive Oscar recognition, they must turn for more serious roles. Diane Keaton, who passed away recently, charted a different course and executed it with effortless grace. Her initial breakout part was in the classic The Godfather, as weighty an cinematic masterpiece as ever produced. But that same year, she reprised the part of the character Linda, the focus of an awkward lead’s admiration, in a film adaptation of the theatrical production Play It Again, Sam. She regularly juggled heavy films with lighthearted romances during the 1970s, and the lighter fare that secured her the Oscar for outstanding actress, changing the genre permanently.

The Oscar-Winning Role

The Oscar statuette was for the film Annie Hall, written and directed by Woody Allen, with Keaton in the lead role, part of the film’s broken romance. Allen and Keaton had been in a romantic relationship before production, and continued as pals until her passing; during conversations, Keaton portrayed Annie as a dream iteration of herself, from Allen’s perspective. It might be simple, then, to think her acting meant being herself. But there’s too much range in Keaton’s work, from her Godfather role and her Allen comedies and throughout that very movie, to discount her skill with romantic comedy as simply turning on the charm – even if she was, of course, incredibly appealing.

A Transition in Style

Annie Hall notably acted as Allen’s transition between slapstick-oriented movies and a more naturalistic style. Therefore, it has plenty of gags, imaginative scenes, and a freewheeling patchwork of a love story recollection alongside sharp observations into a ill-fated romance. In a similar vein, Diane, led an evolution in American rom-coms, portraying neither the screwball-era speed-talker or the sexy scatterbrain famous from the ’50s. Rather, she mixes and matches traits from both to invent a novel style that still reads as oddly contemporary, interrupting her own boldness with her own false-start hesitations.

See, as an example the sequence with the couple initially hit it off after a match of tennis, awkwardly exchanging proposals for a car trip (despite the fact that only a single one owns a vehicle). The dialogue is quick, but meanders unexpectedly, with Keaton navigating her nervousness before concluding with of her whimsical line, a expression that captures her nervous whimsy. The film manifests that sensibility in the subsequent moment, as she engages in casual chat while driving recklessly through New York roads. Later, she centers herself delivering the tune in a cabaret.

Dimensionality and Independence

These aren’t examples of Annie acting erratic. Throughout the movie, there’s a depth to her gentle eccentricity – her lingering counterculture curiosity to experiment with substances, her anxiety about sea creatures and insects, her unwillingness to be shaped by Alvy’s attempts to shape her into someone more superficially serious (for him, that implies focused on dying). In the beginning, Annie might seem like an unusual choice to win an Oscar; she’s the romantic lead in a movie seen from a man’s point of view, and the main pair’s journey doesn’t bend toward adequate growth to make it work. Yet Annie does change, in aspects clear and mysterious. She just doesn’t become a better match for her co-star. Plenty of later rom-coms took the obvious elements – neurotic hang-ups, quirky fashions – not fully copying her core self-reliance.

Ongoing Legacy and Senior Characters

Possibly she grew hesitant of that pattern. Following her collaboration with Allen ended, she stepped away from romantic comedies; Baby Boom is essentially her sole entry from the entirety of the 1980s. But during her absence, Annie Hall, the character perhaps moreso than the loosely structured movie, became a model for the genre. Meg Ryan, for example, owes most of her rom-com career to Keaton’s skill to embody brains and whimsy at once. This rendered Keaton like a timeless love story icon even as she was actually playing more wives (whether happily, as in the movie Father of the Bride, or less so, as in The First Wives Club) and/or parental figures (see The Family Stone or the comedy Because I Said So) than single gals falling in love. Even in her reunion with Allen, they’re a long-married couple drawn nearer by comic amateur sleuthing – and she eases into the part easily, beautifully.

Yet Diane experienced an additional romantic comedy success in 2003 with Something’s Gotta Give, as a dramatist in love with a younger-dating cad (the star Jack Nicholson, naturally). The outcome? One more Oscar recognition, and a complete niche of romantic tales where older women (usually played by movie stars, but still!) take charge of their destinies. Part of the reason her loss is so startling is that she kept producing these stories just last year, a constant multiplex presence. Today viewers must shift from taking that presence for granted to realizing what an enormous influence she was on the rom-com genre as it is recognized. Is it tough to imagine contemporary counterparts of those earlier stars who walk in her shoes, that’s likely since it’s uncommon for an actor of Keaton’s skill to devote herself to a genre that’s mostly been streaming fodder for a while now.

A Unique Legacy

Reflect: there are ten active actresses who earned several Oscar nods. It’s unusual for a single part to begin in a rom-com, not to mention multiple, as was the example of Keaton. {Because her