Play it again, Diane Keaton

Who would not fall in love with Diane Keaton?

- RAJA SEN

Diane Keaton in 'Annie Hall'.

The Annie Hall heroine was muse to the film’s director Woody Allen, who made eight films with her and remained devoted to her, declaring—in a touching elegy—that after her assessment of his first film, Take the Money and Run, he made films only for Keaton, “an audience of one.” They were lovers for years, then friends for life. Francis Ford Coppola, speaking of how he cast the actress in The Godfather, said he was immediately attracted to her. Keaton eventually got involved with her Godfather leading man, Al Pacino. They were lovers for years, then friends for life.

As audiences, we get it. We fell for Diane Keaton the minute we first saw her on screen—probably making a joke—and she, mercifully, befriended us for life.

She bedazzled the world but did so with unnatural ease, as if unaware or dismissive of her charm or her beauty or her talent, unwilling to be celebrated. In his memoir Apropos of Nothing, Allen writes, “Keaton’s the type who complains, ‘Oh, I can’t do this, I can’t imitate Marlon Brando.’ Like the girls in class who tell you how lousy they did on the test and the results come back and they're straight As.” She embodied that self-effacing “aw shucks” nature of Annie Hall, that unforgettable character for whom she won an Oscar, and one that clings to her forever.

We don't have to close our eyes to see her in that outfit—waistcoat and hat and tennis racket—looking daft and divine in the same breath, somehow managing superhuman levels of neurotic awkwardness, as she nearly hitches a ride before eventually offering one.