RIP Diane Keaton, Who Played Charming Potheads on Film

Art: Alejandro Mogollo

The sad news hit today that Diane Keaton, who won an Oscar in 1977 for playing a charmingly ditzy pothead in Annie Hall (1977),  has died at age 79. 

Keaton, whose last name at birth was Hall, was doubtlessly an inspiration for her character in the film, which also picked up Oscars for Best Director (Woody Allen), Best Writing and Best Picture. 

The original title was Anhedonia, meaning the inability to experience pleasure. Allen's character suffers from the condition until he meets Annie, who with all of her fumbling and self-consciousness is a beautiful vessel of pleasure.

Alvy tells Annie that her whole body is an erogenous zone, and soon it is revealed that she insists on smoking pot before they make love. When Alvy objects, comparing it to a comic getting a laugh too easily, Annie tells him if he'd only smoke with her, he wouldn't have to see a therapist. Cinemablend ranked her at #6 as only woman on their list of top 10 movie potheads on the strength of her performance.  

Keaton also smokes pot on film (in a bathtub, pictured) in 1982's Shoot the Moon. In 2005, she appeared as the cancer-stricken matriarch of The Family Stone, in which she takes "special" medicinal brownies, and Luke Wilson helps the uptight Sarah Jessica Parker to loosen up with a bit of the holy herb.

To my knowledge Keaton didn't talk about using pot herself; asked by Variety whether she'd ever taken magic mushrooms as her character in Mack & Rita (2002) did, she responded that she "missed out" on that, and preferred wine with ice in it. 

Keaton grew up in Orange County, California, where—as Woody Allen joked upon presenting her with the American Film Institute Lifetime Achievement Award in 2017—"if you helped a blind person across the street, they accused you of socialism." She made her way to New York City and appeared in the original cast of "Hair" on Broadway in 1968, singing the song, "Black Boys are Delicious." The following year she was nominated for a Tony Award for her role in "Play It Again, Sam," a role she reprised on film. 

Among her amazing portrayals in her long and varied film career were roles in "The Godfather" films, "Looking for Mr. Goodbar" (1977), and "Reds" (1981) (opposite her boyfriend Warren Beatty). In 1984, she played a woman who becomes involved with a Palestinian activist in "Little Drummer Boy," and the wife of a prison warden who helps two prisoners escape in "Mrs. Soffel." In 1987's "Baby Boom," she played a businesswoman who unexpectedly becomes the caretaker to a baby girl. Keaton never married or bore children; she adopted two children in her 50s. 

Keaton in "The Family Stone" (2005)

She still looked great in "Something's Gotta Give" (2003) in which a much-younger doctor played by Keanu Reeves falls in love with her, as does Jack Nicholson, whose character was dating her daughter. She was hilarious as Harrison Ford's newscaster nemesis in "Morning Glory" (2010) and opposite a crotchety Michael Douglas in "And So It Goes" (2014). And she was spotted sporting a "Dope" hat just after wrapping her 2019 film "Poms," in which a group of grandmas take up cheerleading.  

“The brilliant, beautiful, extraordinary Diane Keaton has died. I cannot tell you how unbearably sad this makes me,” Bette Midler, Keaton's co-star (with Goldie Hawn) in "The First Wives Club" wrote. “She was hilarious, a complete original, and completely without guile, or any of the competitiveness one would have expected from such a star."

Cynthia Nixon posted a tribute, too, writing, “When I was a kid, Diane Keaton was my absolute idol. I loved her acting. I loved her vibe. I loved her everything. Starting with when I was 12, I tried to dress like her. I wore my hair long. I sported men’s hats and vests and (even though my eyes were fine) I wore bookish glasses because I thought they made me look more like her.” Nixon praised ‘Then Again’ Keaton's "stunningly honest" autobiography which not only tells her own story but "contrasts it fascinatingly with her mother’s life." 

Keaton produced the 2003 Gus Van Sant drama Elephant about a school shooting, was on the board of the LA Conservancy to save historic buildings, and renovated several homes, including one she sold to Madonna for $6.5 million. She opposed plastic surgery, telling More magazine in 2004, "I'm stuck in this idea that I need to be authentic ... My face needs to look the way I feel." From 2006, she was the face of L'Oréal skin care.

As well as a second memoir, Brother and Sister (2004), and a book about aging titled, Let's Just Say It Wasn't Pretty (2014), she published several collections of her photographs, and served as an editor on collections of architectural photography. In her 2024 book Fashion First she "amusingly revisits and reflects on some of her favorite and not-so-favorite fashion moments over the decades, from childhood homemade outfits to red carpet ensembles and street style experiments she tried from the 1960s until today." 

Keaton directed the 1987 film, Heaven. Let's hope that's where she is tonight.