She received three more Academy Award nominations for her roles as activist Louise Bryant in Reds (1981), a leukemia patient in Marvin's Room (1996), and a dramatist in Something's Gotta Give (2003).

[8][9][10] Her mother won the "Mrs. Los Angeles" pageant for homemakers; Keaton has said that the theatricality of the event inspired her first impulse to be an actress, and led to her desire to work on stage.

Keaton's breakthrough role came two years later when she was cast as Kay Adams, the girlfriend and eventual wife of Michael Corleone (played by Al Pacino) in Francis Ford Coppola's 1972 film The Godfather.

Here she blossomed into something more than just another kooky dame—she put the finishing touches on a type, the anti-goddess, the golden shiksa from the provinces who looks cool and together, who looks as if she must have a date on Saturday night, but has only to open her mouth or gulp or dart spastically sideways to reveal herself as the insecure bungler she is, as complete a social disaster in her own way as Allen's horny West Side intellectual is in his.

[29] Keaton's eccentric wardrobe in Annie Hall, which consisted mainly of vintage men's clothing, including neckties, vests, baggy pants, and fedora hats, made her an unlikely fashion icon of the late 1970s.

In the film, she played a Catholic schoolteacher for deaf children who lives a double life, spending nights frequenting singles bars and engaging in promiscuous sex.

In The New Yorker, Pauline Kael wrote that the film was "perhaps the most revealing American movie of the era", and that Keaton "may be a star without vanity: she's so completely challenged by the role of Faith that all she cares about is getting the character right.

"[41] But the same year, she received positive reviews for her performance in Mrs. Soffel, a film based on the true story of a repressed prison warden's wife who falls in love with a convicted murderer and arranges for his escape.

Two years later, she starred with Jessica Lange and Sissy Spacek in Crimes of the Heart, adapted from Beth Henley's Pulitzer Prize-winning play into a moderately successful screen comedy.

As her sickness advances and his inventor father (John Turturro) grows increasingly distant, the boy is sent to live with his two eccentric uncles (Maury Chaykin and Michael Richards).

Keaton switched the story's setting from the New York of Lidz's book to the Southern California of her own childhood, and the four mad uncles were reduced to a whimsical odd couple.

In 1999, Keaton narrated the one-hour public radio documentary "If I Get Out Alive", the first to focus on the conditions and brutality young people face in the adult correctional system.

The program, produced by Lichtenstein Creative Media, aired on public radio stations across the country and was honored with a First Place National Headliner Award and a Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism.

"[44] A drama about three sisters coping with the senility and eventual death of their elderly father (Walter Matthau), Hanging Up rated poorly with critics and grossed a modest US$36 million at the North American box office.

[63] Peter Travers of Rolling Stone wrote that Town & Country was "less deserving of a review than it is an obituary....The corpse took with it the reputations of its starry cast, including Beatty and Keaton.

In the film, scripted and directed by Thomas Bezucha, Keaton played a breast cancer survivor and matriarch of a big New England family that reunites at the parents' home for its annual Christmas holidays.

[73] Also starring Stephen Collins and Gabriel Macht, the project opened to overwhelmingly negative reviews, with Wesley Morris of The Boston Globe calling it "a sloppily made bowl of reheated chick-flick cliches", and was ranked among the worst-reviewed films of the year.

In Mama's Boy, director Tim Hamilton's feature film debut, Keaton starred as the mother of a self-absorbed 29-year-old (Jon Heder) whose world turns upside down when she starts dating and considers kicking him out of the house.

[77] In 2008, Keaton starred alongside Dax Shepard and Liv Tyler in Vince Di Meglio's dramedy Smother, playing the overbearing mother of an unemployed therapist, who decides to move in with him and his girlfriend after breaking up with her husband (Ken Howard).

"[81] Inspired by Neil Simon's 1972 Broadway play The Sunshine Boys,[82] the film was a moderate success at the box office, taking a worldwide total of almost US$59 million.

Co-starring Kevin Kline and Dianne Wiest and set in Telluride, Colorado,[85] the film follows a woman, played by Keaton, whose husband loses her much-beloved dog at a wedding held at their vacation home in the Rocky Mountains, resulting in a search party to find the pet.

[88][89] Ty Burr of The Boston Globe wrote that the film "would be instantly forgettable if not for Keaton, who imbues [her role] with a sorrow, warmth, wisdom, and rage that feel earned [...] Her performance here is an extension of worn, resilient grace.

In Rob Reiner's romantic dramedy And So It Goes, Keaton portrayed a widowed lounge singer who finds autumnal love with a bad boy (Michael Douglas).

[101] Also in 2015 Netflix announced the comedy Divanation, for which Keaton was expected to reunite with her First Wives Club co-stars Midler and Hawn to portray a former singing group, but the project failed to materialize.

The romantic comedy received mixed reviews from critics, who felt that Book Club only "intermittently rises to the level of its impressive veteran cast,"[111][112] but with a worldwide gross of over $100 million, became Keaton's biggest commercial success in a non-voice role since 2003's Something's Gotta Give.

Works she has edited include a book of photographs by paparazzo Ron Galella, an anthology of reproductions of clown paintings, and a collection of photos of California's Spanish-Colonial-style houses.

The New York Times described Keaton as "remarkably skilled" at portraying Woody Allen's "darling flustered muse" in his comedies, as well as "shy, self-conscious women overcome by the power of their own awakened eroticism" in dramatic films like Looking for Mr. Goodbar, Reds, Shoot the Moon and Mrs.

"[137] Analyzing her on-screen persona, Deborah C. Mitchell wrote that Keaton often played "a complex, modern American woman, a paradox of self-doubt and assurance", which became her trademark.

"[138] Likewise, Bruce Weber felt Keaton's eccentricity—"an amalgam of caginess and insecurity" and a "note of comic desperation... her round-cheeked Annie Hall dewiness"—was her gift as a screen comedian.

"[133] Charles Shyer, who directed her in Baby Boom, said Keaton was "in the mold of the iconic comedic actresses Carole Lombard, Irene Dunne and Rosalind Russell.