Remembering Diane Keaton, Whose Radiance Set Every Character She Played Aglow

She’ll always be Annie Hall. The first time you see Diane Keaton, who died on Saturday at 79, in Woody Allen’s great touchstone of a romantic comedy, she’s walking into a tennis club, her eyes peering around as cautiously as a cat’s. Within seconds, of course, Annie is apologizing for herself, but the faltering, abashed quality of it all is pure unapologetic movie-star charisma — her grin like a sunbeam, her words tumbling out in an infectious clutter, until she finally coughs up that phrase (“LA-di-da!”) almost as if it were a surrender. At that moment, Annie has given up trying to make a sensible sentence speak for her. That’s probably the moment when a great many people in the audience, men and women alike, fell in love with her.

Yet part of why the blushing, halting charm of it was so funny is that Annie, as Keaton portrayed her,…