Who

Keaton is Hollywood's sixtysomething envoy to the world of romantic comedies and Exhibit A whenever the industry counters the claim that it sends aging actresses out to pasture.

Backstory

Diane Hall was raised in LA and dropped out of college after a year to pursue acting, moving to New York in the mid-'60s to take classes at the Neighborhood Playhouse. (She changed her last name to Keaton—her mother's maiden name—when she joined the Actors' Equity Association several years later.) In 1968, she became the understudy to the lead in the Broadway production of Hair; not long after, she met Woody Allen, who cast her in his 1969 production Play it Again, Sam. Although playing Kay Adams, the girlfriend of Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) in Francis Ford Coppola's 1972 blockbuster The Godfather is generally considered Keaton's breakthrough role, she became a household name largely due to her relationship (both professional and romantic) with Allen in 1970s. Over the course of the decade, Keaton starred in a slew of Allen's movies, most notably the semi-autobiographical 1977 classic Annie Hall ("Annie" is a nickname of hers, and "Hall" is her original last name), in which she displayed the bumbling, stammering delivery that's become her acting trademark.

Keaton's collaboration with Allen ended with 1979's Manhattan and she later took up with Warren Beatty, earning an Oscar nom for her performance opposite Beattie in 1981's Reds. Her subsequent films in the mid-'80s, though, were largely disappointments, and Keaton faded from the public eye. She spent several years directing and appearing in several forgotten pics before making a mid-'90s comeback: 1996's The First Wives Club, starring Keaton, Goldie Hawn and Bette Midler, proved to be a giant hit. And a torrent of publicity followed her (nude) appearance in 2003's Something's Gotta Give, for which she was nominated for an Oscar. More recently, she starred as a nervous mom in the hollow chick flick Because I Said So with Mandy Moore.

Pet cause

The hybrid-driving liberal has donated thousands to Democratic candidates over the years, and occasionally spouts half-coherent political musings on the Huffington Post. She's also a major supporter of the National Colorectal Cancer Research Alliance; she filmed a public service announcement for the group in 2006.

The look

Keaton is a vocal opponent of plastic surgery. Pricey creams, however, are just fine: Keaton currently flacks for L'Oreal's Age Perfect Pro-Calcium skin care line. But it's her clothes that have generated the most press in recent years. She's been a regular on "worst-dressed" lists for as long as they've been around, and famously assaulted the eyes of all Americans with a get-up that was part Annie Hall, part Charlie Chaplin at the 2004 Oscars.

Personal

Keaton has never been married although she's certainly dated plenty of famous men: Warren Beatty, Woody Allen, and Al Pacino are among her exes. She adopted two children while in her 50s—a daughter named Dexter and a son named Duke. She divides her time between an apartment at the San Remo on Central Park West and a home in LA.

True story

In 1985, Keaton was the only member of the San Remo co-op board to vote in favor of Madonna's application to purchase an apartment in the building.