Coming Up: Diane Keaton Retrospective at Lincoln Center
The legendary Academy Award–winning actress gets the royal treatment with a film tribute featuring her best works.
The incomparable Diane Keaton passed away on October 11, 2025, to the dismay of cinephiles everywhere. A Los Angeles native born in 1946, she moved to New York at the age of 19 to pursue a career in acting, where she trained with Sanford Meisner. Keaton quickly developed a reputation for eccentricity—she remembered being referred to as “the kooky actress” even back then on NPR’s Fresh Air in 1997. She was never able to shake that, not that she tried to, and instead, her unpretentious quirkiness became her trademark.
It was this reputation that got Keaton one of her first major film roles as Kay Adams in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather (1972). Coppola had seen her in Lovers and Other Strangers (1970) and cast her because he wanted Kay to have Keaton’s quirky energy. It helped that she saw herself in Kay: Both had to navigate being a “woman in the world of men.”
Keaton had her breakout success as the lead in Woody Allen’s take on the romantic comedy in Annie Hall (1977), and she was, in some ways, playing herself as she was in the 1970s. And like Annie, she worried that she wasn’t pretty or smart enough, wondering why she seemed to be inept at love. She never married, instead having long-term relationships with Allen and Godfather co-star Al Pacino. Still, she didn’t regret not getting married, deciding that it wouldn’t have been a good idea for her to do so. Ever the eccentric, she became a mother at age 50 when she adopted daughter Dexter and son Duke.
Annie Hall established Keaton as a movie star, as well as an unlikely style icon. Some of the pieces she wore in the film came from her own wardrobe. Known for her tomboyish look, her costumes consisted mainly of vintage men’s clothing, including neckties, vests, baggy pants, and fedora hats. After the film’s release, many women were inspired to begin donning menswear. While her fashion choices evolved through the years (a turtleneck became one of her hallmarks), Keaton maintained her style icon status until the end.
Keaton was able to accomplish a near impossible feat for many women in the industry: She continued working well past her expiration date as an actress, playing parts with more meat than just the lead’s nondescript mother. She found success in romantic comedies, portraying women of a certain age. Keaton declared that Nancy Meyers’ Something’s Gotta Give (2003) was her favorite out of her stacked filmography. Keaton thrived in the rom com, a genre that usually doesn’t feature older women in a leading role. In 2018, she starred in Bill Holderman’s Book Club, along with fellow legends Jane Fonda, Candice Bergen, and Mary Steenburgen. Co-written by Holdermann and Erin Simms, the film was intended to be a love letter to Keaton’s work in the genre—it wasn’t just a coincidence that the character she plays is also named Diane.
She leaves behind an incredible body of work, spanning five decades. As Francis Ford Coppola said, “Words can’t express the wonder and talent of Diane Keaton.” She was a unique, unpretentious talent, who embraced age and was able to forge a career playing mature women.
A retrospective in Diane Keaton’s honor will begin at Film @ Lincoln Center, running from February 13–19. It includes The Godfather trilogy, Annie Hall, Something’s Gotta Give, Looking for Mr. Goodbar, and more. Learn more here.