Diane Keaton “was so charming, so beautiful, so magical, that I questioned my sanity,” Woody Allen recalled thinking not long after meeting the actress in the late 1960s. “I thought: ‘Could I be in love so quickly?’”
Keaton, whose death at 79 was announced on Saturday, would quickly become Allen’s creative muse as well as his romantic partner and eventually, after their split, a trusted friend.
“Why we parted, only God and Freud might be able to figure out,” Allen, 89, wrote in a remembrance published on Sunday in The Free Press. He reminisced about their connection, which began with her audition for Allen’s play “Play It Again, Sam.” Keaton would star opposite Allen in that production, and her performance eventually earned her a Tony Award nomination.
Nearly a decade later, Keaton’s star ascended with her performance in “Annie Hall,” Allen’s 1977 rom-com masterpiece. It won four Academy Awards, including best actress for Keaton and best picture. Keaton appeared in eight Allen movies overall, including “Manhattan,” “Interiors” and “Radio Days.” Perhaps more important, he wrote, she was his most discerning and trusted critic.
Keaton insisted, against Allen’s judgment, that his early movie “Take the Money and Run” (1969) was funny and original. After the film was a success, he never doubted her instincts again. “I showed her every film I made after that, and grew to care only about her appraisals,” he wrote.
As time went on, “I made movies for an audience of one, Diane Keaton. I never read a single review of my work and cared only what Keaton had to say about it,” he wrote. “For all her shyness and self-effacing personality, she was totally secure in her own aesthetic judgment.”
Keaton remained loyal to Allen amid the abuse allegations he faced. In 2018, on Twitter, she wrote: “Woody Allen is my friend and I continue to believe him.” She included a link to a 1992 interview Allen had done with “60 Minutes” in which he defended himself.
In his essay, Allen shared personal memories about his time with Keaton, including about her struggle with the eating disorder bulimia, which she wrote about in her 2011 memoir, “Then Again.”
He also recalled meeting Keaton’s family for the first time, at Thanksgiving in Southern California, where she was from. “This was Keaton’s world, her people, her background,” he wrote. “It was amazing that this beautiful yokel went on to become an award-winning actress and sophisticated fashion icon.”
After her death, the world is a drearier place, he concluded. “Still, there are her movies,” he wrote. “And her great laugh still echoes in my head.”
Maya Salam is an editor and reporter, focusing primarily on pop culture across genres.
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