If you didn’t have time to watch a Diane Keaton film this weekend, I hope one is on your watchlist for your next movie night. The legendary, beloved actress has died at 79, it was confirmed on Saturday.
The outpouring of love for the star in the days since has confirmed what made her so special. Keaton starred in more than 100 film and TV projects, from The First Wives Club to The Godfather. Across comedy and drama, she did it all. She was quirky, distinct—a true original.
She was a style icon, with her oversized clothes, men’s suiting, bowler hats, and gloves. Her own fashion shaped her characters, rather than the other way around, starting with Annie Hall, for which she won the Oscar. She dressed for herself, not for the male gaze. And she showed women that they could, too. That there were ways to be in the world, to present to the world that perhaps they hadn’t even thought of yet.
Fashion was just one way Keaton charted her own path. She dated many of Hollywood’s leading men, but she never married. In 2019, she spoke about that choice. She said she was glad she never had. “I remember one day in high school, this guy came up to me and said, ‘One day you’re going to make a good wife,'” she said. “And I thought, ‘I don’t want to be a wife. No.’”
In her 50s, Keaton adopted two children on her own. “Motherhood was not an urge I couldn’t resist,” she said. “It was more like a thought I’d been thinking for a very long time. So I plunged in.”
On screen in her later years, Keaton played some of her most iconic roles, making it look fun, fabulous, and sometimes silly to be an older woman. Her collaboration with Nancy Meyers—Something’s Gotta Give—set that tone two decades ago. Her characters were romantic leads well into her 70s. She proved the viability of stories about vibrant older women at the box office in a world that often questions whether those stories even exist.
Keaton described herself as an “odd ball” when talking about her choice to remain single. She made it OK—more than OK, she made it cool—for other women to be odd balls, too.
Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
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PARTING WORDS
"You’ve got to be great when the lights aren’t on you. You’ve got to be great when nobody’s in the gym with you. You’ve got to be great when you may not get anything on the end."
—A'ja Wilson on winning her third WNBA championship with the Las Vegas Aces in four years
