Every A-list actor who called Diane Keaton an inspiration: “She’s just real”
Diane Keaton was a versatile star, but the innate quirkiness she embodied was her defining quality, and it’s for this reason that many actors have cited her as their ultimate inspiration: she simply existed in a whole arena of her own.
Take Elizabeth Olsen, for example, who found an acting idol in Keaton and told The Guardian that watching her in movies like Annie Hall made her realise “the kind of woman I wanted to be, because I hadn’t seen the woman I felt connected to in films. I was like, I’m not the sexy one, I’m not the nerd, I don’t know where I fit”.
Olsen is just one of many actors who have always looked up to Keaton, with two-time Oscar winner Emma Stone being another notable lover of the star. “I haven’t met her, but I talk about her so damn much that she’s probably scared of me. I talk about her literally every day. She’s probably a little freaked out by me, so maybe it’s a better idea not to meet her because she’s probably going to have to get some sort of restraining order at this point. I’m kidding, I promise I am no threat,” the Poor Things star once revealed.
Keaton has appeared in such a large quantity of incredible films that it’s hard to pick just one; perhaps she’ll forever be Kay Corleone from The Godfather to you, or maybe you’ll always associate her with Woody Allen movies, meanwhile, Greta Gerwig drew parallels between her own approach to acting and Keaton’s, wherein you can certainly see the lineage between characters like Frances Halladay from Frances Ha and Annie Hall.
“I’m not comparing myself to her, but if you hire Diane Keaton, you’re going to get Diane Keaton. She can play lots of different things, but she more often than anything is Diane Keaton,” Gerwig told The Los Angeles Times.
Besides these younger stars, Keaton has also been long admired by her contemporaries, including some of Hollywood’s most acclaimed actors, with the list of her fans being endless, including everyone from Al Pacino and Robert Redford to Meryl Streep and Jane Fonda lauding her talents.
Streep was hugely inspired by her, and she got to work with her on the moving drama Marvin’s Room in 1996, telling USA Today, “She is physically incapable of actorishness or falsity or any kind of punching up the line for the laughs. She’s just real. Because she’s really on a very high order of artist”.
It was Keaton’s authenticity both in real life and on screen that really cemented her influential status. We’re drawn to people without pretence, who aren’t afraid to show the uglier, messier sides of being human, and the actor was exactly that, while also being a versatile performer.
Fonda recognised her humanity in an Instagram post following her passing in 2025, really encapsulating everything that made the actor so loved, as she noted succintly, “She was always a spark of life and light, constantly giggling at her own foibles, being limitlessly creative…in her acting, her wardrobe, her books, her friends, her homes, her library, her world view. Unique is what she was. And, though she didn’t know it or wouldn’t admit it, man, she was a fine actress!”
