Opinion The accessible imperfection of Diane Keaton

She showed that leading ladies — and not just leading men — could be “kooky”, her words again, and dress just a bit crooked, like that tie she wore half-tucked. For countless little girls and young teens seeking to find a reflection of themselves on the big screen, or of anything other than the “normal”, there she was, in all her awkward glory. Long before actresses would be hailed for ditching contact lenses for glasses at the Oscars, she was there everywhere in hers.

Keaton may have come to stardom as the wounded wife of The Godfather, whose shattered face marks the end of innocence of Michael Corleone, but rarely again — starting with Annie Hall, and right through multiple awards for her work both on the stage and screen — would she play a role where her destiny was shaped by another. That included not choosing to ever get married, something rare for a woman who was in her 70s, as Keaton noted once. Instead, what she had were romances, including a great one with Michael Corleone or Al Pacino himself, and another with Woody Allen — romances that linger on in memory precisely for remaining unfinished.

In his tribute to Keaton, Allen called her “unlike anyone the planet has experienced or is likely to ever see again”; someone for whom all rules and everything else “stand suspended”. Allen, who directed and starred in Annie Hall, would know that better than anyone else — being in many ways the true soulmate of that immortal Keaton character who, unlike her, has strived since to hold on to its spirit.

If her self-assured, distinctive strength marked Keaton, so did her encompassing warmth. No one could look into her smiling eyes and not find a grin forming along one’s lips. As Meryl Streep said in a speech that went viral following the announcement of Keaton’s death, “Diane Keaton, arguably the most covered-up person in the history of clothes, is also a transparent woman. There is nobody who stands more exposed, more undefended, more willing to show herself inside and out, than Diane.”

Streep went on to describe Keaton’s portrayal of Annie Hall as that of a “hummingbird”, so small and so hard to pin down, yet so hard to miss. This is where Keaton differed from other colleagues, including Streep — if the latter embodies formidable perfection, Keaton’s was an accessible imperfection. Her 2014 memoir Let’s Just Say It Wasn’t Pretty, on the ups and downs of living and working in a world obsessed with beauty, is dedicated to “all the women who can’t get to right without being wrong”, with Keaton talking about being “inept, inexact, imprecise”, and mangling her sentences when growing up.

In Then Again, Keaton again wrote about the burden of correction. “The exhausting effort to control time by altering the effects of age doesn’t bring happiness,” she wrote. “Why try to appeal to everyone?” was her calling card.

Like that turtleneck she made her own (partly to keep off the sun after surviving skin cancer), it is fitting that she also wrote a book called Fashion First, in collaboration with Ralph Lauren. In a chapter on paparazzi shots, she wrote, “If I were to describe my so-called ‘street style’, I would say, GET RID OF MY ENTIRE BODY, including my eyes, my nose, my mouth, all of my legs, and the rest of me. Sadly, I need a nose and a mouth to live and breathe, but that doesn’t mean I need to show them off.”

“La-di-da, la-di-da, la-la,” we say, like Annie Hall.

shalini.langer@expressindia.com