Diane Keaton, who has died in Los Angeles at the age of 79, was the sort of actor fans felt they knew personally. This is no slight on her versatility. She worked through a range of character types in a career that lasted close to 60 years. She was Michael Corleone’s misused, conspicuously non-Sicilian wife in the Godfather trilogy. She played Louise Bryant, ground-breaking US journalist and activist, opposite Warren Beatty in Reds from 1981. But she was never able to fully escape association with the titular charmer in Woody Allen’s still irresistible Annie Hall from 1977. No wonder. Allen, who first dated Keaton while appearing with her in the Broadway production of Play it Again, Sam in 1969, named the character for her – she was born as Diane Hall – and mapped some of Keaton’s traits onto
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