Oscar-winning 'Annie Hall' star Diane Keaton dies at 79: Remembering the actress who made awkward cool

Dubai: I never met Diane Keaton, but she still rearranged my idea of what a leading lady could look like. She was the patron saint of women who overthink, under-apologize, and accessorise with opinions (and of course, fashionable hats).

If you’ve ever buttoned a shirt all the way up and felt invincible, blame Diane. If you’ve ever laughed so hard mid-argument that you won the point anyway, that’s her, too.

We first fell for her as Kay — watching the mafia from the good couch, knowing more than she said. Then came Annie Hall, the role that rewrote the rules. Diane didn’t just play Annie — she was Annie: smart, funny, a little unsure, yet utterly magnetic. She made messy conversations and mismatched clothes feel like self-expression before the world had a word for it.

She gave awkward women swagger and glamorous women permission to be weird. She made “uncool” the new cool.

Her long creative partnership with Woody Allen shaped some of the most defining moments in American cinema. Long after their romance ended, she stood by him as a friend and collaborator — loyal in a way that was both complicated and deeply human. Their chemistry on screen, from Play It Again, Sam to Manhattan Murder Mystery, was lightning in corduroy: two neurotic geniuses bouncing off each other in perfect rhythm.

Her career was a mixtape we kept on loop. Drama that bruised (Looking for Mr. Goodbar, Interiors), comedy that healed (Baby Boom, First Wives Club), romance that refused to age out (Something’s Gotta Give). She could go from soft to razor-sharp in a single line and make you feel seen in the messy middle of it all. And just when you thought you had her pegged, she’d pop up as a Pixar mom or a nun with a devastating side-eye. Range wasn’t a brag; it was her resting state.

Offscreen, she lived like an exclamation mark in a world of ellipses—single mother by choice, preservation nerd by passion, photographer, renovator, a lover of old houses and new chapters. She didn’t chase the gaze; she redirected it. She didn’t beg the industry to make space; she wore a bigger jacket and took it.

What I loved most? Diane never mistook stillness for smallness. She could sit across from a legend, sip something in a perfectly starched shirt, and you’d swear the frame tilted toward her. The camera adored her. So did we.

So goodbye to the woman who made turtlenecks weatherproof and neurosis aspirational.

Thank you for the blueprint: be funny, be frank, be fearless, and if in doubt, add a hat. You taught us that style is a point of view, and that a point of view—clever, vulnerable, stubbornly your own—can be a life’s greatest role.

La-di-da, Diane. Curtain call, fedora tilt, exit left. We’re still watching.