Diane Keaton performed opposite some of the biggest names in Hollywood, from Al Pacino and Woody Allen in her early breakthrough performances (in, respectively, The Godfather and Annie Hall), to Warren Beatty, Jack Nicholson, Goldie Hawn, Keanu Reeves, Rachel McAdams, Jane Fonda and even Dory the fish from Finding Dory, the sequel to Finding Nemo.
But through it all, Christopher Rosen suggests, she was entirely inimitable — and never more than in Annie Hall, which won Keaton her only Oscar.
“I just think it’s just like a perfect encapsulation of what I thought made her really so special as an actor,” he says. “She’s so unique and, in the movie, incredibly funny and weird and strange in a way that feels almost out of step with the era in which it was made — and it still feels like that.”
Annie Hall is but one of the movies, Chris, Richard Rushfield and Katey Rich discussed today to pay tribute to Keaton, who died Saturday at 79. To celebrate Keaton’s professional life, the trio selected five movies apiece to recommend and consider, covering everything from her numerous collaborations with Allen (they made eight movies together) to her millennial classics like Something’s Gotta Give and The Family Stone, to, of course, The Godfather.
“The Godfather is a top 10 all-time American film, if not a top one all-time American film,” Richard says, noting Keaton gives the “critical performance” in the Francis Ford Coppola epic.
“A lot of other people would have played that part a lot more broadly, and it would have really dragged down the movie a lot,” he says.
For Katey, Keaton’s strength as an actress was the way she elevated her co-stars across generations.
“We keep talking about the chemistry she has with these men, and you don’t want to boil down her success into her relationships with onscreen men,” Katey says, while discussing Something’s Gotta Give, Keaton’s final Oscar-nominated performance. “But her with both Keanu Reeves and Jack Nicholson in that movie — there is something about that light that is behind her that we were talking about with Annie Hall, and it doesn’t diminish her to reflect so well off of them. They grow in strength.”
