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Numerous accomplished actresses have performed in rom-coms. Usually, when aiming to win an Oscar, they have to reach for weightier characters. Diane Keaton, who passed away recently, took an opposite path and pulled it off with seamless ease. Her first major film role was in The Godfather, about as serious an film classic as ever created. However, concurrently, she reprised the part of Linda, the love interest of a geeky protagonist, in a cinematic take of the stage play Play It Again, Sam. She regularly juggled serious dramas with funny love stories throughout the ’70s, and the comedies that earned her the Academy Award for leading actress, changing the genre permanently.

The Academy Award Part

The Oscar statuette was for the film Annie Hall, co-written and directed by Allen, with Keaton in the lead role, part of the film’s broken romance. The director and star were once romantically involved before making the film, and continued as pals for the rest of her life; in interviews, Keaton had characterized Annie as a perfect image of herself, through Allen’s eyes. One could assume, then, to think her acting meant being herself. But there’s too much range in her acting, contrasting her dramatic part and her comedic collaborations and inside Annie Hall alone, to dismiss her facility with romantic comedy as simply turning on the charm – though she was, of course, tremendously charming.

Shifting Genres

Annie Hall famously served as Allen’s transition between more gag-based broad comedies and a more naturalistic style. Consequently, it has plenty of gags, dreamlike moments, and a loose collage of a relationship memoir alongside sharp observations into a fated love affair. In a similar vein, Diane, oversaw a change in U.S. romantic comedies, playing neither the fast-talking screwball type or the glamorous airhead popularized in the 1950s. Rather, she blends and combines traits from both to create something entirely new that feels modern even now, cutting her confidence short with her own false-start hesitations.

See, as an example the sequence with the couple first connect after a tennis game, awkwardly exchanging proposals for a car trip (although only one of them has a car). The dialogue is quick, but veers erratically, with Keaton maneuvering through her nervousness before ending up stuck of her whimsical line, a expression that captures her quirky unease. The story embodies that feeling in the subsequent moment, as she makes blasé small talk while operating the car carelessly through Manhattan streets. Afterward, she centers herself delivering the tune in a nightclub.

Complexity and Freedom

These aren’t examples of the character’s unpredictability. Across the film, there’s a depth to her gentle eccentricity – her post-hippie openness to sample narcotics, her anxiety about sea creatures and insects, her resistance to control by the protagonist’s tries to mold her into someone outwardly grave (for him, that implies focused on dying). At first, Annie could appear like an unusual choice to receive acclaim; she’s the romantic lead in a story filtered through a man’s eyes, and the central couple’s arc doesn’t lead to adequate growth to suit each other. Yet Annie does change, in manners visible and hidden. She merely avoids becoming a more compatible mate for her co-star. Many subsequent love stories took the obvious elements – anxious quirks, odd clothing – failing to replicate her core self-reliance.

Lasting Influence and Later Roles

Perhaps Keaton felt cautious of that trend. Following her collaboration with Allen ended, she stepped away from romantic comedies; her movie Baby Boom is essentially her sole entry from the complete 1980s period. Yet while she was gone, Annie Hall, the character perhaps moreso than the loosely structured movie, emerged as a template for the style. Meg Ryan, for example, credits much of her love story success to Diane’s talent to portray intelligence and flightiness together. This cast Keaton as like a timeless love story icon despite her real roles being more wives (if contentedly, as in the movie Father of the Bride, or more strained, as in The First Wives Club) and/or mothers (see The Family Stone or Because I Said So) than single gals falling in love. Even during her return with Woody Allen, they’re a long-married couple united more deeply by humorous investigations – and she slips into that role easily, beautifully.

However, Keaton also enjoyed another major rom-com hit in the year 2003 with that Nancy Meyers movie, as a writer in love with a younger-dating cad (actor Jack Nicholson, naturally). The result? Her final Oscar nomination, and a whole subgenre of love stories where mature females (often portrayed by famous faces, but still!) reassert their romantic and/or social agency. Part of the reason her loss is so startling is that Keaton was still making such films as recently as last year, a frequent big-screen star. Now audiences will be pivoting from expecting her roles to understanding the huge impact she was on the rom-com genre as it exists today. Should it be difficult to recall modern equivalents of Meg Ryan or Goldie Hawn who walk in her shoes, the reason may be it’s rare for a performer of Keaton’s skill to devote herself to a style that’s mostly been streaming fodder for a recent period.

An Exceptional Impact

Ponder: there are ten active actresses who received at least four best actress nominations. It’s uncommon for any performance to begin in a rom-com, especially not several, as was the example of Keaton. {Because her