Diane Keaton Should Have As Many Oscars As Katharine Hepburn

It’s taken me a while to put fingers to keyboard and write about Diane Keaton.

What finally gave me the push was our annual viewing of The Family Stone, a movie that gets better with age, mostly because of Keaton’s understated, complex turn as a woman who knows she’s dying and wants her children to be in a good place. Keaton isn’t afraid to come off as pointed and mean, which might have lost her an Oscar nomination back in 2005. More on that later.

An older Sicilian cousin of mine, who had three children, felt it was her life’s purpose to make sure her kids were all married off. She would use the word sistemata over and over, which means ‘settled/sorted.’ She wasn’t dying, she was just driven.

Keaton’s matriarch, Sybil, just wants her offspring to be happy, or have a chance at happiness. So, she speaks her mind, even when it’s something no one wants to hear. The film is a celebration of life, and seeing it this Christmas, after Keaton’s untimely passing, for me it played like a tribute to Keaton’s charm, whimsy and tremendous audacity to seek truth from the characters she played, forever pushing the envelope, sometimes into territory that made viewers feel like voyeurs.

The film is particularly cherished by queer folk who felt seen and adored thanks to Sybil’s display of unconditional love towards her gay son. If Keaton wasn’t a gay icon before The Family Stone–and I’d argue she became one right after Annie Hall–that performance solidified it.

The loss of Diane Keaton hit me hard. I didn’t quite realize just how important her work was to my coming-of-age until I began reflecting on her tremendous body of work. Since her death, I have rewatched many of her films. The experience re-confirmed what I had always felt:

Diane Keaton should have at least as many Oscars as Katharine Hepburn.

Now, we all know the Academy Awards are messy, and voting is often based on politics or what is seen as zeitgeisty or a notion of who is due or some antiquated idea of likability or a ridiculous thought that the more an actor transforms the more difficult the performance. So, Peter O’Toole giving the performance of his life in The Stunt Man loses to Robert DeNiro’s weight-gain, boxing-trained–albeit amazing–turn in Raging Bull—totally unfair. And probably not an example many will agree with, which I delight in—because the Oscars should be about disagreement. FYI: O’Toole never won a competitive Oscar, despite being in the running eight times.

Female actors, in particular, mustn’t be unlikeable as my colleague Megan McLachlan just pointed out in her incisive piece on Marty Supreme, HERE.

The truly unique and unconventional Ms. Keaton famously won her first and only Oscar with her first nomination in Woody Allen’s Annie Hall in 1977, at the 50th Academy Awards ceremony on April 3, 1978. It was fitting that the very first Best Actress recipient, Janet Gaynor, presented it to her (oddly, along with Walter Matthau) as she was also a cinematic presence who was difficult to define, to label, to put into some box.

Keaton famously beat out one of the strongest group of phenomenal female lead performance in decades in one of the most difficult races to handicap.

Each nominee had a great shot at winning, beginning with Jane Fonda, who already had an Oscar for Alan J. Pakula’s seminal Klute in 1971, but hadn’t made many films since, busy with her campaign to end the war in Vietnam. Fonda played playwright Lillian Hellman in Fred Zinnemann’s stunning Julia.A win for her would be a nod that Hollywood, unlike the moronic right, were not carrying some Hanoi Jane grudge. Also, she was fucking fantastic in the film, opposite the luminous Vanessa Redgrave. Julia received 11 Oscar nominations. And Fonda won the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Drama.

If there was front-runner, though, it was Shirley MacLaine. This was her fourth nomination having been cited before for Vincente Minnelli’s Some Came Running (1958), Billy Wilder’s The Apartment (1960) and Wilder’s Irma La Douce (1963). Many thought she would win for The Apartment but that was Elizabeth Taylor’s tracheotomy year so a lesser work, Butterfield 8, would be her first win. MacLaine was definitely due.

MacLaine’s co-star, Anne Bancroft, already had an Oscar for The Miracle Worker. Yet Bancroft won the National Board of Review Award for Best Actress.

Marsha Mason tied with Keaton for the Best Actress Comedy Golden Globe for The Goodbye Girl.

And Keaton grabbed the BAFTA for Best Actress.

On Oscar night, despite MacLaine having the overdue narrative and Fonda, industry forgiveness momentum, Keaton prevailed and graciously acknowledged her fellow nominees, along with Allen.

It’s interesting to note that in 1977, Rex Reed wrote in his review of the other Keaton film that year, Looking for Mr. Goodbar, “If Diane Keaton does not win the Best Actress Oscar…there is no God!” She did. But for a different film. A much safer one.

Goodbar was adapted for the screen and directed by Richard Brooks and based on the wildly popular novel by Judith Rossner. The film was loved and hated with almost equal intensity, yet Keaton’s fearless work demanded attention. She played Theresa Dunn, a teacher of deaf children by day and singles bar obsessive at night, brought up in an uber repressed Catholic home. It’s a brazen, unapologetic portrayal of an enigmatic anti-heroine—and–about as different from Annie Hall as you can get.

Keaton was Globe nominated for Goodbar, in the Drama category. Tuesday Weld would be the only acting nomination the film received. It’s quite probable that her stunner of a turn in Goodbar helped her cross that crowded finish line. But had she been nominated for the Oscar for Goodbar, chances are that MacLaine or Fonda would have been crowned Best Actress 1977. Even by today’s standards, Theresa is not the most likable female character, meaning…she’s real.

Annie Hall/Looking for Mr. Goodbar, apple/oysters. Keaton deserved her first Oscar.

The next two years brought outstanding Keaton impressions in the next two Allen masterworks, Interiors and Manhattan. Both received acting Oscar nominations, but none for Keaton. She was recognized with a BAFTA nod for Manhattan.

1981 would boast Keaton’s best performance to date–and I would argue her best of all-time. As Louise Bryant in Warren Beatty’s brilliant and bold (even today) epic, Reds, the actress had her most challenging part.

Reds is a 195-minute cinematic tour de force about the tumultuous love affair between radical journalist John Reed and journo and suffragist Louise Bryant, set against the backdrop of the Russian Revolution. The film was well received critically and commercially and copped 12 Oscar nominations, one in each acting category—Beatty, Keaton, Maureen Stapleton, who would win, and Jack Nicholson, who should have won, as Eugene O’Neill.

Keaton was nominated for the BAFTA and the Drama Golden Globe.

This was another ridiculous embarrassment-of-riches year with Lead Female performances, so much so that expected names like, Sally Field in Absence of Malice, Sissy Spacek in Raggedy Man and even Faye Dunaway’s controversial embodiment of Joan Crawford in Mommie Dearest, were left off the list.

The nominees included Keaton, Meryl Streep in The French Lieutenant’s Woman, Katharine Hepburn in On Golden Pond, Marsha Mason in Only When I Laugh and Susan Sarandon in Atlantic City.

Going into the evening, Keaton was the front-runner as Reds was expected to sweep many categories. Streep was seen as a potential spoiler. No one saw the upset coming, but in retrospect, it made sense.

AMPAS has never been very kind to Warren Beatty in terms of actual awards. Oh, they will shower him with nominations for films like Bonnie and Clyde and Heaven Can Wait, only to watch him sit and lose. On Oscar night 1982, Reds ended up with only three Oscars. The Academy seemed to go out of their collective way to shun him. They grudgingly gave him one of the four Oscars he was up for, Best Director. But Best Picture was awarded to those boys running around in their undies, Chariots of Fire—which astonishingly also won Costume Design!

Keaton, arguably collateral damage, lost to Hepburn, grabbing her fourth Best Actress Award–still the record for any actor. The great Kate had gone from being a Hollywood outsider who was shunned in her ‘30s, in the 1930s, to the beloved matriarch of cinema, in her twilight years. And as Ethel Thayer, she was the glue that held that family together. How could you not reward such a performance?

Was Hepburn worthy? Sure. Was Keaton more deserving? Hell, yes!

Now, I realize in taking this Oscar away from the Great Kate (and wouldn’t it be nice if there were alternate Academy-Award-ceremony universes where everyone got a turn?), that would leave her with only three. So to be fair, we will give her the Best Actress trophy she should have won for Sidney Lumet’s 1962 classic Long Days Journey Into Night. Sorry, not sorry, Anne Bancroft (The Miracle Worker)!

In 1982, a super young, but already movified, Frank J. Avella read Hollywood columnist Marilyn Beck’s NY Daily News column where she discussed the Oscar frontrunners. And to my ire, she excluded Keaton who delivered yet nuanced dramatic turn in Alan Parker’s searing look at divorce, Shoot the Moon, opposite the great Albert Finney. I was so upset I wrote Ms. Beck arguing that there was no way the Academy could snub such extraordinary work. I stated that Shoot the Moon was everything Kramer vs. Kramer should have been but wasn’t, a bracingly honest film that didn’t feel the need to be cutesy or overly soapy to seek our sympathies (I stand by that argument today, btw).

Ms. Beck kindly wrote back that she agreed Keaton was more than worthy, but that she was basing her predictions on how poorly the film did at the box office. The Golden Globe announcement gave me hope, both Finney and Keaton made the list. But on Oscar morning, Keaton’s name was absent (as was Finney’s). The two most lauded (and deserved) actresses made it, Meryl Streep in Sophie’s Choice and Jessica Lange in Frances, along with Julie Andrews inVictor/Victoria, Debra Winger in An Officer and a Gentleman and Sissy Spacek, for what is arguably a supporting turn, in Missing. Winger’s nomination was most preposterous; it was one-note. Perhaps voters felt bad having overlooked her for Urban Cowboy. Regardless, Keaton was robbed. I just rewatched Shoot the Moon and it is not only Parker’s best film, but one of Keaton’s finest, most deeply realized portrayals.

Still, Beck was right and young Frank learned a valuable lesson when handicapping the Oscars, don’t let your own feelings about a performance get in the way of trying to figure out what will appeal to the broad, middle-brow, conservative voting body (at least back then). I still make the “Keaton mistake” once in a while.

Keaton’s next shot at a potential nomination was in 1984 when she delivered strong perfs in two dramas, The Little Drummer Girl and Mrs. Soffel, the latter garnering her a Golden Globe mention. She appeared on a number of prognosticator lists. But come nom announcement, no Diane. It’s quite possible votes were split.

Bruce Beresford’s fascinating 1986 adaptation of Beth Henley’s play Crimes of the Heart starred Keaton, Jessica Lange and Sissy Spacek. The latter walked away with most of the acclaim and a Best Actress Oscar nomination, but for me, it was Keaton’s endearing, neurotic, boisterous Lenny that was the center of that film. Keaton, once again, showed her comic daring, never afraid to go big. And then even bigger.

Baby Boom (1987) and Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993) would land her Golden Globe nominations number six and seven in the Comedy categories, but no Oscar love.

That brings me to Kay Adams-Corleone-Michelson. I am one of ‘the few, the proud’ fans—along with our own David Phillips–of The Godfather Part III. I agree with most crix that it is not on the same level as the two previous cinematic achievements, but it is a monumental work, nonetheless.

And much of its success has to do with Francis Ford Coppola’s brilliant eye and the performance of Al Pacino, Talia Shire, Andy Garcia and Keaton. This was Pacino’s King Lear and the fact that he wasn’t even nominated for his towering performance is outrageous and probs the reason he finally won his lone Oscar, to date, for the mediocre Scent of a Woman, two years later. Shame on AMPAS for that. Garcia was the lone acting nomination from GIII.

But it’s Keaton’s Kay who was always a confused, conflicted outsider in the saga, who no longer “dreads” Michael and has come to understand him—even, forgives him. And watching her heartbroken moment on the stairs of the Teatro Massimo Opera House where she pauses her own intense mourning to feel for a man who is now shattered beyond hope — it’s an astonishing moment. Whoopi Goldberg won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress that year for her comic turn in the truly awful film Ghost having been shunned for her meatier role in The Color Purple five years earlier. Keaton got bupkis.

Her performance in The Godfather Part III should have nabbed her a third Oscar.

Marvin’s Room provided Keaton with a chance to do a dramatic deep dive as Bessie, a woman who finds out she is dying and needs a bone-marrow transplant. The film is loaded with terrific performances including Meryl Streep as Bessie’s irate sister Lee and a young Leonardo DiCaprio killing it as Lee’s troubled son, Hank.

Streep received a Globe nod, while Keaton got two SAG mentions and her third Oscar nomination. She lost to Frances McDormand’s wacky performance in Fargo. Personally, I wasn’t as blown away by McDormand the way the world was back then. I would have chosen Emily Watson for her game-changing work in Lars von Trier’s Breaking the Waves. With Keaton coming in a close second.

Ms. K’s last Academy Award nomination was for Nancy Meyer’s hilarious and poignant 2003 film, Something’s Gotta Give and had Monster not come out that year, she would have surely won a second trophy. Alas, Charlize Theron was the victor. And it’s difficult to argue that one. Keaton did win the Golden Globe for Comedy Actress as well as the National Board of Review’s Best Actress Award.

Which brings me back to The Family Stone, where Keaton’s performance was a runner-up for the New York Film Critics Circle award for Best Supporting Actress and ballyhooed in the early Oscar rumblings. In the end, she was not recognized and when you look at the list of female actors that were, it’s a true head scratcher (exceptions: Rachel Weisz in The Constant Gardner, who won, and Amy Adams in Junebug, who was fab). The others, Catherine Keener in Capote, Frances McDormand in North Country and Michelle Williams in Brokeback Mountain, feel like fillers, perfs that barely made an impression on those movies. Keaton is the heart, mind and soul of The Family Stone.

Of course, the Best Supporting Actress Oscar selections are often bewildering. Even recently, how do you wrap your mind around Carol Kane’s amazing work in Between the Temples and Leonie Benesch’s powerful turn in September 5 both being overlooked for Felicity Jones’s histrionics in The Brutalist?

But I digress…

The Family Stone should have garnered Keaton her fourth Oscar. Easily.

It is an artistic achievement that will, at least, be remembered by many people each Christmas. And if writer-director Thomas Bezucha has his way as he just recently announced, there will be a sequel and it will, hopefully, be a proper tribute to Keaton. Fingers crossed.

Keaton continued to work for almost 20 more years, delivering a host of wildly entertaining performances in films like the underrated Hampstead (2017), Mack and Rita (2022) and the Book Club movies (2018, 2023) where she starred opposite Jane Fonda, Candice Bergen and Mary Steenburgen. She shines bright in all of them—despite critical consensus being against her.

But then, critical consensus largely (still) consists of a certain demographic that would rather watch women being hacked to death in crap horror movies than searing dramas or clever comedies featuring quirky, idiosyncratic, non-conformist lead female actors like Keaton. And if that sounds like an unfair indictment, take a look at the Rotten Tomatoes scores of most Diane Keaton films of the last two decades and compare them to any slice-and-dice-young-women thrillers in those same 20 years. It’s quite alarming.

As a proud gay man, I am grateful to Ms. Keaton for showing me that being unique, feeling slightly uneasy–but still the most at home–in your own bubble world and banging your own, well,—whatever it is you like to bang—-was not just okay, it was to be celebrated—it was the only way to be.

Diane Keaton, with her infectious laugh, her tremendous humility, her keen ability to tap into a character’s individual nature and, yes, her unique fashion sense, showed moviegoers that it was okay to wave their freak flag—to be an original or at least seek out the most authentic parts of themselves.

She was singularity personified.

And she made my world a better place.

Thank the cinema gods her films exist so future generations can experience her genius.