KEATON, DIANE

born January 5, 1946, Los Angeles, Calif., U.S. original name Diane Hall American motion picture actress and director who achieved fame in quirky comic roles and who later became one of Hollywood's most respected dramatic actresses. Keaton studied acting at Santa Ana College in California and at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York. She played a variety of roles in summer stock in the mid-1960s, and in 1968 she understudied the lead in the Broadway rock musical Hair. She achieved a measure of fame as a result of her leading role in Woody Allen's Broadway play Play It Again, Sam (1969), a role she reprised for the 1972 film version. Keaton made her film debut in Lovers and Other Strangers (1970), in which her character of a young naf who is breaking up with her husband because his hair no longer smells like raisins established a comic persona that would sustain her career for several years. Her only dramatic performances in the early 1970s came in Francis Ford Coppola's landmark epics The Godfather (1972) and The Godfather, Part II (1974). She appeared mostly in Allen's films during this period, including Sleeper (1973) and Love and Death (1975), and made a brief return to Broadway in the play The Primary English Class (1976). Keaton's watershed year was 1977: in two films she not only established herself as a major star and respected actress but succeeded in both reinventing her screen persona and capitalizing on her established one. Allen's Annie Hallwhich won Oscars for best picture, actress, and directoris probably the film for which Keaton is best known. Garrulous, self-deprecating Annie is the archetypal Keaton kook, but one whose growth throughout the film parallels Keaton's maturity as an actress. Based on the real-life relationship between Allen and Keaton, the film chronicles Annie's transformation from shy awkwardness to mature confidence, a process through which, ironically, she loses the qualities that endeared her to the man (Allen) who helped her transform. In many ways it was an autobiographical statement for Keaton, whose performance the same year in Richard Brooks's dark, violent Looking for Mr. Goodbar was further confirmation that her rather one-note dingbat roles were behind her. She continued to work with Allen in Interiors (1978) and Manhattan (1979) and received another Oscar nomination for her portrayal of journalist Louise Bryant in Warren Beatty's Reds (1981). She found continued success in such diverse films as Shoot the Moon (1982), The Little Drummer Girl (1984), Mrs. Soffel (1984), Crimes of the Heart (1986), and the popular Baby Boom (1987). She ventured into directing with Heaven (1987), a documentary that chronicles diverse interpretations of the afterlife. During the 1990s Keaton appeared in several popular films, such as The Godfather, Part III (1990), Father of the Bride (1991), Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993), and Father of the Bride, Part II (1995). She continued to hone her directorial craft by directing several music videos, as well as the television film Wildflower (1991) and the theatrical release Unstrung Heroes (1995). She adopted a baby girl in 1996, and in 2000 she returned to direct and star in the feature Hanging Up.