‘I lost a friend of almost 40 years’: Nancy Meyers pays tribute to Diane Keaton

By Casey Cooper-Fiske, PA Senior Entertainment Reporter

Filmmaker Nancy Meyers has paid tribute to “friend of almost 40 years” Diane Keaton following her death aged 79.

The pair first worked together on Baby Boom (1988), going on to work on Father Of The Bride (1992) and its 1996 follow-up, before reuniting in 2004 for Something’s Gotta Give.

In a post on Instagram, the 75-year-old said: “These past 48 hours have not been easy. Seeing all of your tributes to Diane has been a comfort. As a movie lover, I’m with you all – we have lost a giant. A brilliant actress who time and again laid herself bare to tell our stories.

“As a woman, I lost a friend of almost 40 years – at times over those years, she felt like a sister because we shared so many truly memorable experiences.

“As a filmmaker, I’ve lost a connection with an actress that one can only dream of.”

Meyers said “writing for her made me better” due to the connection they had, and called her work “groundbreaking”.

She added: “She made everything better, every set up, every day, in every movie, I watched her give it her all.

“When I needed her to cry in scene after scene in Something’s Gotta Give she went at it hard and then somehow made it funny, and I remember she would sometimes spin in a kind of goofy circle before a take to purposely get herself off balance or whatever she needed to shed so she could be in the moment.

“She was fearless, she was like nobody ever, she was born to be a movie star, her laugh could make your day and for me, knowing her and working with her – changed my life. Thank you Di. I’ll miss you forever.”

She joins a string of actors and directors, including Francis Ford Coppola, Goldie Hawn, Bette Midler and Ben Stiller, who have remembered the actress best known for her role as Kay Adams in The Godfather and collaborations with Woody Allen.

In a post shared on his Instagram page, Coppola said: “Words can’t express the wonder and talent of Diane Keaton. Endlessly intelligent, so beautiful.

“From her earliest performances in Hair and throughout her amazing career, she was an extraordinary actor.”

Keaton made her film debut in 1970’s Lovers And Other Strangers but shot to fame in 1972 after playing Kay, the girlfriend and then wife of Al Pacino’s Michael Corleone in Coppola’s The Godfather – a role which she reprised in 1974’s The Godfather Part II and 1990’s The Godfather Part III.

She went on to have a long career as a film actress, appearing in Father Of The Bride, The Family Stone, Something’s Gotta Give and The Book Club movies.

Her final films were Summer Camp and Arthur’s Whisky in 2024, and it appears she had not started filming anything else.

Following the news of her death, Hawn and Midler, who starred opposite Keaton in 1996’s The First Wives Club, about three women whose husbands had left them for younger women, paid tribute to Keaton.

In a post on Instagram, Hawn said she left “memories beyond imagination”.

“You’ve left us with a trail of fairy dust, filled with particles of light and memories beyond imagination,” she said.

“You stole the hearts of the world and shared your genius with millions, making films that made us laugh and cry in ways only you could.”

While Midler wrote on Instagram: “She was hilarious, a complete original, and completely without guile, or any of the competitiveness one would have expected from such a star.”

Jane Fonda, who starred alongside Keaton in The Book Club, described Keaton in a post on Instagram as “a spark of life and light” with Stiller calling her “one of the greatest film actors ever” in a post on X.

Keaton was nominated for Oscars for her roles in Something’s Gotta Give, Marvin’s Room and Reds, in which she starred opposite Warren Beatty.

For a large part of her career she collaborated with Allen, her one-time boyfriend, including on Annie Hall which she won the Oscar for best actress and has since become associated with the title character’s menswear-centric wardrobe.

In 1996, Keaton adopted a daughter, Dexter, and a son, Duke, four years later, however, never married.

A family spokesperson told US magazine People that Keaton’s loved ones have asked for privacy after she died in California.