When discussing the career of the extraordinary Diane Keaton, it’s easy to focus on her comedic work. And why wouldn’t anyone? Her gift for off-kilter line readings that still fit perfectly in every film she made despite her admittedly kooky persona is all but unparalleled. The list of her pitch-perfect performances in comedies is vast. Some of them were great films, some were good, and a few were mediocre, but Keaton was always great.
Her breathless run of Woody Allen films is legendary: Play It Again Sam, Sleeper, Love and Death, Manhattan, Radio Days, Manhattan Murder Mystery, and of course, her signature Oscar-winning role, Annie Hall.
Had she made not a single other comedy outside of the Allen films, her place in history would be secure, but she didn’t stop there. Among her other notable laughers are Crimes of the Heart, Baby Boom, Father of the Bride I & II, The First Wives Club, Something’s Gotta Give, The Family Stone, and Morning Glory.
Keaton was so gifted and particular in delivering her comedic performances that it’s almost impossible to imagine anyone else in most of those films mentioned above. It’s fair to say that she was an original comic genius.
She was so good at comedy that it can be easy to overlook her work in drama. Allen’s Ingmar Bergman-inspired Interiors, the vastly underrated The Good Mother, and Marvin’s Room are all good examples of her dramatic chops.
Beyond those three fine films and performances, I’d like to focus on four heavy dramas that I believe are her very best work outside of comedy, and among her best performances, period.
In Francis Ford Coppola’s Godfather trilogy, she provided a ballast for that legendary series of films. As Kay, the WASPy wife of Al Pacino’s Michael Corleone, her eyes were the slow-opening window for the audience into the world of crime. Kay was an outsider to the Corleone family. In both I & II, she has the door closed on her. In the former by one of Michael’s henchmen as he takes his father’s place as the new godfather, and in the latter, when Michael himself closes the door in her face, and on their marriage.
In Godfather II (1974), a pivotal scene of enormous power unfolds as the heretofore meekly supportive Kay confronts Michael about his life of crime and the lengths she went to in avoiding giving him another child. As she reveals to Michael that her story of a miscarriage was a ruse for an abortion, Michael’s expression changes. His eyes widen slightly, and his face all but trembles. It is the best scene of barely controlled seething rage that I’ve ever seen on film, and Pacino is terrifying, even before he finally explodes. As great as Pacino is in the moment, it is Keaton’s quivering courage in the face of a man capable of killing his own brother that allows the scene to elevate to its dizzying heights. Keaton and Pacino must balance one another in that moment, and in doing so, they created a sequence for the cinematic ages.
Three years later, in 1977, Keaton played a personally troubled, but dedicated elementary teacher who practiced free love by night in Looking for Mr. Goodbar. It’s an exceedingly bold performance by Keaton. As Theresa Dunn, Keaton bares her body and soul as a too-trusting educator who brings the wrong man home one night to tragic results. Keaton’s eccentricities carry the film forward. Without her, the movie might have been too grim, but her natural energy and craft didn’t allow it. Looking for Mr. Goodbar, directed by Richard Brooks, was a controversial film at the time and received a mixed response from critics and audiences. Theresa is one of Keaton’s boldest creations. She’s a modern woman in a society that is neither ready nor safe for her. There are very few actors who could have pulled off Theresa’s mixture of guilelessness and empathy. The final scene of Looking for Mr. Goodbar has haunted me since the night I first saw it. I suspect it always will.
In the history of “divorce movies,” Kramer vs. Kramer, The Squid and the Whale, and Marriage Story (the latter two both written and directed by Noah Baumbach) are the three most often mentioned in the top tier. However, Alan Parker’s Shoot the Moon (1982) is better than all of them. The film stars Keaton and Albert Finney as Faith and George Dunlap, a couple whose fifteen-year marriage is dissolving before their eyes. George is work and mistress-obsessed, and when he leaves, Faith is left to pick up the pieces and start a new life as the primary caregiver of their children.
Once Faith finds a new lover, George’s jealousy ignites a scabrous feud between him and Faith, leading to a verbally and then physically vicious climax. As a child of divorce, Shoot the Moon crawled under my skin and never left. The final moments of the film are nothing less than shattering. Finney was in his prime at the time, which is to say he was one of the finest actors on earth during the shoot. Keaton was no less his equal.
I’ve saved my favorite Keaton performance for last. The 1981 historical epic Reds recounts the story of American Journalist John Reed, who became a communist revolutionary between 1915 and 1920. Reds is a genuinely radical epic, with Warren Beatty as co-writer, director, and leading man. Keaton plays Louise Bryant, an independent woman at a time when women could not yet vote in the United States. Reed and Bryant love each other deeply, but their relationship is troubled and unconventional. Bryant has an affair with the playwright Eugene O’Neill (a brilliant Jack Nicholson). Surrounded by powerful men in a society that subjugated women with their own views, Bryant sought the agency to express her own beliefs and be heard.
Keaton ultimately steals the film from two of the era’s biggest stars. There are times she almost swallows Beatty whole in their scenes together, pushing the icon to keep up with her. Even more impressive are the few scenes Keaton has with Nicholson. During a verbally brutal back-and-forth between Keaton’s Louise and Nicholson’s Eugene, the former explodes upon the latter, dressing him down for his selfishness and lack of courage before slamming the door behind her. It is an awe-inspiring moment that leaves O’Neill all but crumbling in his chair. As the door closes behind her, we hear Eugene say in a voice too weak and too late, “Louise.”
Eugene knows that when Louise leaves, she may never come back. Moreover, he knows that he has never seen, and never will meet, anyone like her.
The actor who played Louise has now left us. We have never seen, and never will meet, anyone like her.
“Diane.”
Diane Keaton died on October 11, 2025. She was 79 years old.
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