Being Diane Keaton

Four decades after Annie Hall, DIANE KEATON continues to be the most emulated of Hollywood icons, treading the ground between real and reel, masculine and feminine, humour and self-deprecation. Smart, funny, more comfortable in a trilby and tie than tulleheres to the original breaker of rules, channelled by actor DISHA PATANI.

- Shalini Shah

A scroll through Diane Keaton’s Instagram reveals an odd assortment of things. There’s a picture of her with her dog Josie, whom Al Pacino got for her during the filming of The Godfather III; a family portrait where she’s drawing your attention to her mum Dorothy; a video of her kissing Jimmy Kimmel on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, gleefully captioned “SOMEONE HAD FUN LAST NIGHT… ME!”; two trapeze artistes “JUST HANGING BY THE THREAD” (she’s made all-caps her Insta captioning stylistic element); grinning on a high-backed chair in front of shelves lined with bottles of Keaton wine, wearing a grey tullelined skirt, black turtleneck and platform boots like only she can; a screenshot of an article in W magazine with the headline “Diane Keaton, 71, is the most underrated celebrity of Instagram.” It’s all black-and-white or sepia, artsy but personal, moody but happy, grainy but sparkling. “Diane, the public wants selfies,” someone commented, responding to a photo of a house that looks neatly sliced down the middle like cake.

Why can’t the world have enough of Diane Keaton? It’s been more than 40 years since Annie Hall stumbled into our lives, sliding out of a cab in New York and telling a whiny Alvy that he’d have to find a way to deal with his rotten mood. Nervous but bold, susceptible, volatile, on the cusp of solidifying her general opinions, culturally curious, good with the tennis racquet and terrible with lobsters, spiders and the steering wheel, a wine-drinker who never thought of stocking wine glasses, the all-absorbing protégé on her way to outgrowing her mentor—Annie was the girl-woman we rooted for. And few films merged actor and character like Annie Hall did.