She was too young. And maybe because the details of her death are murky, it just seems so avoidable. I have read she struggled with bulimia and battled skin cancer for decades. Apparently, she was also a smoker. Maybe those factors made her particularly susceptible to pneumonia. One of her friends said she had gotten awfully thin. It seems she had some very close friends, including Goldie Hawn who said Diane talked about living communally with her women friends when they got older. (That’s an idea I have broached with my own friends!) In fact, her screen performances made her such a likable woman that her passing makes everyone feel they lost a friend. She seemed like a good person: her last picture was made with her beloved golden retriever. And she never said anything bad publicly about the men in her life. She appeared fiercely independent with her own fashion style. On screen, she was funny, warm, quirky, and vulnerable. I’ve been watching her movies but was particularly struck by her performance in Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977). Watch that one again if you haven’t seen it in a while. It kind of mesmerized me for several reasons: her performance, Richard Gere’s performance, the disco music, the sadness of a woman who wants love so badly that she has stopped believing in it. Diane Keaton’s death should remind us all, especially those of us who are women of a certain age, that when you are SICK you need to get HELP before it is too late.
