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Elle Keaton Biography & Facts

Diane Keaton (born Diane Hall on January 5, 1946) is an American actress. She has received various accolades throughout her career spanning over five decades, including an Academy Award, a British Academy Film Award, and two Golden Globe Awards, in addition to nominations for a Tony Award and two Emmy Awards. She was honored with the Film Society of Lincoln Center Gala Tribute in 2007 and an AFI Life Achievement Award in 2017. Keaton's career began on stage when she appeared in the original 1968 Broadway production of the musical Hair. The next year she was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play for her performance in Woody Allen's comic play Play it Again, Sam. She then made her screen debut in a small role in Lovers and Other Strangers (1970), before rising to prominence with her first major film role as Kay Adams-Corleone in Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather (1972), a role she reprised in its sequels Part II (1974) and Part III (1990). She frequently collaborated with Woody Allen, beginning with the film adaptation of Play It Again, Sam (1972). Her next two films with him, Sleeper (1973) and Love and Death (1975), established her as a comic actress, while her fourth, Annie Hall (1977), won her the Academy Award for Best Actress. To avoid being typecast as her Annie Hall persona, Keaton appeared in several dramatic films, starring in Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977) and Interiors (1978). She received three more Academy Award nominations for her roles as activist Louise Bryant in Reds (1981), a leukemia patient in Marvin's Room (1996), and a dramatist in Something's Gotta Give (2003). Keaton is also known for her starring roles in Manhattan (1979), Baby Boom (1987), Father of the Bride (1991), Father of the Bride Part II (1995), The First Wives Club (1996), The Family Stone (2005), Finding Dory (2016) and Book Club (2018). Early life and education Keaton was born Diane Hall in Los Angeles, California on January 5, 1946. Her mother, Dorothy Deanne (née Keaton), was a homemaker and amateur photographer; her father, John Newton Ignatius "Jack" Hall, was a real estate broker and civil engineer, whose mother had come from Ireland. Keaton was raised a Free Methodist by her mother. Her mother won the "Mrs. Los Angeles" pageant for homemakers; Keaton has said that the theatricality of the event inspired her first impulse to be an actress, and led to her desire to work on stage. She has also credited Katharine Hepburn, whom she admires for playing strong and independent women, as one of her inspirations. Keaton is a 1964 graduate of Santa Ana High School in Santa Ana, California. During her time there, she participated in singing and acting clubs at school, and starred as Blanche DuBois in a school production of A Streetcar Named Desire. After graduation, she attended Santa Ana College, and later Orange Coast College as an acting student, but dropped out after a year to pursue an entertainment career in Manhattan. Upon joining the Actors' Equity Association, she changed her surname to Keaton, which was her mother's maiden name, as there was already an actress registered under the name of Diane Hall. For a brief time she also moonlighted at nightclubs with a singing act. She revisited her nightclub act in Annie Hall (1977), And So It Goes (2014), and a cameo in Radio Days (1987). Keaton began studying acting at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York City. She initially studied acting under the Meisner technique, an ensemble acting technique first evolved in the 1930s by Sanford Meisner, a New York stage actor/acting coach/director who had been a member of The Group Theater (1931–1940). She describes her acting technique as, "[being] only as good as the person you're acting with ... As opposed to going it on my own and forging my path to create a wonderful performance without the help of anyone. I always need the help of everyone!" According to fellow actor Jack Nicholson, "She approaches a script sort of like a play in that she has the entire script memorized before you start doing the movie, which I don't know any other actors doing that." Career 1970s In 1968, Keaton became an understudy for part of Sheila in the original Broadway production of Hair. She gained some notoriety for her refusal to disrobe at the end of Act I when the cast performs nude, even though nudity in the production was optional for actors (those who performed nude received a $50 bonus). After acting in Hair for nine months, she auditioned for a part in Woody Allen's production of Play It Again, Sam. After nearly being passed over for being too tall (at 5 ft 8 in (173 cm), she is 2 inches (5 cm) taller than Allen), she won the part. She went on to receive a Tony Award nomination for a Best Featured Actress in a Play for her performance in Play It Again, Sam. The next year, Keaton made her film debut in Lovers and Other Strangers. She followed with guest roles on the television series Love, American Style, Night Gallery, and Mannix. Between films, Keaton appeared in a series of deodorant commercials. Keaton's breakthrough role came two years later when she was cast as Kay Adams, the girlfriend and eventual wife of Michael Corleone (played by Al Pacino) in Francis Ford Coppola's 1972 film The Godfather. Coppola noted that he first noticed Keaton in Lovers and Other Strangers, and cast her because of her reputation for eccentricity that he wanted her to bring to the role (Keaton claims that at the time she was commonly referred to as "the kooky actress" of the film industry). Her performance in the film was loosely based on her real-life experience of making the film, both of which she has described as being "the woman in a world of men." The Godfather was an unparalleled critical and financial success, becoming the highest-grossing film of the year and winning the 1972 Academy Award for Best Picture. Two years later, she reprised her role as Kay Adams in The Godfather Part II. She was initially reluctant, saying, "At first, I was skeptical about playing Kay again in the Godfather sequel. But when I read the script, the character seemed much more substantial than in the first film." In Part II, her character changed dramatically, becoming more embittered about her husband's criminal empire. Even though Keaton received widespread exposure from the films, some critics felt that her character's importance was minimal. Time wrote that she was "invisible in The Godfather and pallid in The Godfather Part II, but according to Empire magazine, Keaton "proves the quiet lynchpin which is no mean feat in [the] necessarily male dominated films." Keaton's other notable films of the 1970s included many collaborations with Woody Allen. She played many eccentric characters in several of his comic and dramatic films, including Sleeper, Love and Death, Interiors, Manhattan, Manhattan Murder Mystery and the film version of Play It Again, Sam, directed by Herbert Ross. Allen has credited Keato.... Discover the Elle Keaton popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Elle Keaton books.