Although she never married…
3 min read
·
Oct 18, 2025
Diane Keaton was a visual presence from my 20s to my 70s, her Annie Hall-inspired look a reference point. I had moved to New York City from the Midwest, almost Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, and saw Woody Allen filming Annie Hall and Manhattan around the City. Annie Hall’s thrift store look became Diane Keaton’s designer-collected look, but she still wore brimmed hats and gussied-up men’s wear.
I got furious when I read various obituaries or memorials that included the phrase “although she never married” as if that still were a marker, a deficit. Yes, she dated interesting men. They dated her, an interesting woman.
I didn’t know that I loved Diane Keaton. Maybe many of her fans didn’t know they loved her. There has been an outpouring of memories since she died — our memories of her. But it’s really our memories of how she showed up in our lives.
I admired her because she seemed so human, a witty friend I’d like to have.
She wore layers of clothing as if they were lightweight armor, even as her emotional vulnerability was available to the characters she played. Diane’s movie actress self was deprecating, insecure.
She built and decorated her own houses, wrote and curated books, and directed movies. She describes her mother as her hero. She raised her children in her 50s and 60s.
I was reminded of a psychic I went to after my longtime love had died. She told me that I needed to show some vulnerability to let someone else in — confidence had its place, but I seemed like I didn’t need anybody else.
I thought that of Diane Keaton, too, whether or not it’s true — she kept herself very well, thank you, she wasn’t needy. She showed up for her relationships, her friendships. She was trying to work it all out, independent, but inventing it as she went along. She was funny.
Robert Redford’s face looked over my bed in my freshman dorm room. The poster, from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, was the last thing I saw before I slept.
The poster was popular. The face was popular. Many looked to Robert Redford as a pin-up. He was, well-lit and staged for the shot, impossibly handsome.
We learned other facts that made him admirable. He lived out of Hollywood’s grasp. He supported creative and environmental work. His partners seemed to be normal women, not artificially beautified women. His partners were interesting.
In his older age, his face was weathered and lined. A morning interview show with Robert Redford and Jane Fonda promoted their last movie. She was outraged when asked about “what plastic surgery work” she had done. “I haven’t had any work done,” he said, and I laughed out loud and thought, “No kidding!” That was how I remember Robert Redford, understated, funny in what he didn’t say.
From Barefoot in the Park to Our Souls at Night, I loved watching him. I didn’t fantasize about him. He was the perfect movie star. He’s gone now. No one can replace him in my life; no one else was the last person I looked at when I was 18.
Diane Keaton, too, was an independent woman trying to figure it out when I wanted to be an independent woman trying to figure it out. I looked at images of her when she was an ingenue, and it is as she aged that she began to look like “herself,” the person we came to know, to a distant public.
I like to think that’s how we are, too — more of ourselves, more confident. But I won’t have new celebrities that are markers in my life, who play hide and seek with life stages. It’s something else we lose as we age, but we appreciate having had it.
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