Quote of the Day (Diane Keaton, on Her Transformative Acting Moment)

“There was no discussion with my parents on the night I sang ‘Mata Hari’ in our Santa Ana High School production of the musical Little Mary Sunshine. Under the direction of our drama teacher, Mr. Robert Leasing, the production was worthy of Broadway—at least I thought so. I was Nancy Twinkle, the second lead, who loves to flirt with men. In my big number, ‘Mata Hari,’ I ran around the stage singing about the famous double agent ‘who would spy and get her data by doing this and that-a,’ ending with a grand finale featuring me sliding down a rope into the orchestra pit. That was when I heard the explosion. It came from the audience. It was applause. When Mom and Dad found me backstage, their faces were beaming. Dad had tears in his eyes. I’d never seen him so excited…. I could tell he was startled by his awkward daughter—the one who’d flunked algebra, smashed into his new Ford station wagon with the old Buick station wagon, and spent a half hour in the bathroom using up a whole can of Helene Curtis hairspray. For one thrilling moment, I was his Seabiscuit, Audrey Hepburn, and Wonder Woman rolled into one. I was his heroine.”—Academy Award-winning actress Diane Keaton (1946-2025), Then Again (2011)

Why did the passing of Diane Keaton over the weekend sadden me the way it did? It shouldn’t have. At age 79, she was at the leading edge of the baby boom, the demographic to which I belong—one that, even among friends and relatives, never mind celebrities, has faced mortality, leaving those of us left behind pondering the losses.

In her memoir Then Again, Keaton herself reflected with rueful irony on the famous people she met whose aging surprised her, notably Audrey Hepburn at the 1977 Academy Awards: “Backstage, I pretended to listen to her words, but in truth I couldn’t get my mind off age and what it does to a person.”

Maybe I was so stunned by the news of Keaton’s death—and why she was, too, by seeing Hepburn in person, two decades after she burst onto the screen—because of the nature of her medium.

If movie actors are lucky and they don’t mind transitioning into character roles, they can continue to work even after gray hairs and wrinkles become impossible to ignore. Yet it remains the case that, unlike the stage, film preserves their early appearances, when they are young, vibrant and luminous.

Maybe that’s why, for today’s “Quote of the Day,” I decided to concentrate not on Keaton’s thoughts on growing older, but on her early days—even before she was a professional.

Her “Eureka” moment in high school, I think, epitomizes what convinces so many actors to pursue this as a calling, no matter how many discouraging experiences they may subsequently have. It’s the same kind of thunderstruck realization that animates the finest show-business memoir I know, playwright Moss Hart’s Act One.

In Keaton’s case, the applause she heard from an audience enabled her to triumph over her awkwardness by incorporating it into her persona and making it endearing, the way she would more than a decade later as Annie Hall—and inspire a moment of pride in her family that would only increase with the years.