Diane Keaton (née Hall; January 5, 1946 – October 11, 2025) was an American actress.

She received various accolades throughout her career spanning over five decades, including an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, and two Golden Globe Awards, in addition to nominations for two Emmy Awards, and a Tony Award. She was honored with the Film Society of Lincoln Center Gala Tribute in 2007 and an AFI Life Achievement Award in 2017.

Keaton's career began on stage when she appeared in the original 1968 Broadway production of the musical Hair. The next year she was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play for her performance in Woody Allen's comic play Play It Again, Sam. She then made her screen debut in a small role in Lovers and Other Strangers (1970), before rising to prominence with her first major film role as Kay Adams-Corleone in Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather (1972), a role she reprised in its sequels Part II (1974) and Part III (1990). She frequently collaborated with Woody Allen, beginning with the film adaptation of Play It Again, Sam (1972). Her next two films with him, Sleeper (1973) and Love and Death (1975), established her as a comic actress, while her fourth, Annie Hall (1977), won her the Academy Award for Best Actress.

Keaton was further Oscar-nominated for her roles as activist Louise Bryant in Reds (1981), a leukemia patient in Marvin's Room (1996), and a dramatist in Something's Gotta Give (2003). She was known for her roles in dramatic films such as Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977), Interiors (1978), and Crimes of the Heart (1986), as well as comedic roles in Manhattan (1979), Baby Boom (1987), Father of the Bride (1991), its 1995 sequel, Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993), The First Wives Club (1996), The Family Stone (2005), Finding Dory (2016), and Book Club (2018).

Early life and education

Diane Hall was born on January 5, 1946, in Los Angeles, California. Her mother, Dorothy Deanne (née Keaton), was a homemaker and amateur photographer; her father, John Newton Ignatius "Jack" Hall, was a real estate broker and civil engineer, whose mother had come from Ireland. Keaton was raised a Free Methodist by her mother. Her mother won the "Mrs. Los Angeles" pageant for homemakers; Keaton said that the theatricality of the event inspired her first impulse to become an actress and ultimately her desire to work on stage. She also credited Katharine Hepburn, whom she admired for playing strong and independent women, as one of her inspirations.

Keaton was a 1963 graduate of Santa Ana High School in Santa Ana, California. During her time there, she participated in singing and acting clubs at school, and starred as Blanche DuBois in a school production of A Streetcar Named Desire. After graduation, she attended Santa Ana College, and later Orange Coast College as an acting student, but dropped out after a year to pursue an entertainment career in Manhattan. Upon joining the Actors' Equity Association, she changed her surname to Keaton, which was her mother's maiden name, as there was already an actress registered under the name of Diane Hall. For a brief time she also moonlighted at nightclubs with a singing act. She revisited her nightclub act in Annie Hall (1977), And So It Goes (2014), and a cameo in Radio Days (1987).

Keaton began studying acting at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York City. She initially studied acting under the Meisner technique, an ensemble acting technique first evolved in the 1930s by Sanford Meisner, a New York stage actor/acting coach/director who had been a member of The Group Theater (1931–1940). She describes her acting technique as, "[being] only as good as the person you're acting with ... As opposed to going it on my own and forging my path to create a wonderful performance without the help of anyone. I always need the help of everyone!" According to fellow actor Jack Nicholson, "She approaches a script sort of like a play in that she has the entire script memorized before you start doing the movie, which I don't know any other actors doing that."