Woody Allen remembers Diane Keaton: "Her face and her laugh lit up any room she entered."
The filmmaker says goodbye to the actress in a letter where he recalls how they met and all the years they spent together.
BarcelonaFilmmaker Woody Allen (New York, 1935) and actress Diane Keaton (Los Angeles, 1946-2025) formed one of Hollywood's most prolific film couples during the 1970s. Two days later of the death of the interpreter, Allen wanted to remember her with an emotional letter that has been published by the Free Press agency"Her face and her laughter lit up any room she entered," writes Allen. In the text, the film director recalls the moment he met the actress. It was in 1969 during the Broadway performances of the play Play it again, Sam, which would later be turned into a film —Dreams of a Seducer (1972)—. Allen played a neurotic writer who fell in love with Keaton's character. "She was shy. I was shy, and with two shy people things can be pretty absurd," the filmmaker writes. After a week of working, they went to lunch. "It was our first personal moment. She was so charming, so beautiful, so magical, that I wondered about my sanity. I thought, 'Could I have fallen in love so quickly?'" Allen says.
They quickly became a couple, and Keaton became the first person Allen showed his work to. "If she liked it, she considered the film an artistic success. If she wasn't very enthusiastic, I tried to use her reviews to re-edit it and come up with something that made her sound better," says the director, who is not one to praise the actress's artistic talent effusively and emphasizes that, beyond acting, Keaton also made and directed films.
Allen and Keaton collaborated on eight films, including the legendary Annie Hall which earned the actress an Oscar, and others such as Interiors (1978) and Manhattan (1979). "After several years together, we both moved on, and only God and Freud could figure out why we parted ways," Allen recalls. In 2017, the director dedicated a speech to Keaton during the American Film Institute's lifetime achievement tribute to the actress. "I definitely owe a lot of what I've accomplished in life to her. Seeing life through her eyes is truly amazing. She's a fantastic woman in everything she does," the director said at the time. The filmmaker concludes the letter by deeply mourning the loss of Keaton: "A few days ago, the world was a place that included Diane Keaton. Now it's a world without her. Therefore, it's a sadder world. Yet, we have her movies. And her big laugh still echoes in my head."