“Too tall and too ‘kooky’” – that was one casting director’s verdict on Diane Keaton in the late 1960s, said The Guardian . But when the actress, who has died aged 79, auditioned for the original stage production of the comedy “Play It Again, Sam”, its writer, Woody Allen, was transfixed. Keaton was, he recalled, “adorable, funny, totally original in style, real, fresh … One talks about a personality that lights up a room, she lit up a boulevard.”

A few years later, he cast her in the film version – in the same year as she proved her dramatic skills with her “heartbreaking” performance as Kay, the wife of Al Pacino’s character Michael in “The Godfather”, a role she reprised in its sequels. But it was Allen’s “Annie Hall”, in 1977, that turned her into one of the biggest stars of her era

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