Diane Keaton — who sadly passed away on October 11, 2025 at the age of 79 — didn’t have to wait very long to star in her first major movie. After her big screen debut in “Lovers and Other Strangers,” her very next feature-length movie was none other than “The Godfather.” Keaton played Kay Adams, who becomes the second wife — and, eventually, second former wife — of Michael Corleone (Al Pacino). She later made the startling admission that she hadn’t even read “The Godfather” novel at the time that she auditioned for the film, but that clearly didn’t prevent her from landing the breakthrough role.

Like everyone in “The Godfather” franchise, it’s difficult to overstate what a huge impact the role had on Keaton’s career. She soon got to go down in Academy Awards history when her return in “The Godfather Part II” made her part of the first sequel to ever win best picture. So it might come as a huge surprise that in 2017, Keaton said she had only just recently watched “The Godfather” for the first time in decades. Her primary reason was that she felt almost disconnected from the film and its legacy, and had trouble understanding or believing that she was worthy of being included in its legendary status. 

“The Godfather Part III” didn’t have a lot of fans when it was first released in 1990, and among the chorus of dissenters was Diane Keaton herself. She told Variety, “When I saw it way back, it was like ‘Oh, I don’t know.’ It didn’t seem to do that well and the reviews weren’t great.” But just a few years after she had finally given the original “The Godfather” a rewatch again, she also had the opportunity to revisit “The Godfather Part III” via a new cut of the movie from director and co-writer Francis Ford Coppola that was released to theaters in 2020. 

While it feels as though the main creative change to come out of that recut was the way it offered redemption for Michael Corleone, it offered something of a redemption for Keaton herself at the same time, at least as a fan. “It was one of the best moments of my life to watch it,” she told Variety after seeing the recut. “To me it was a dream come true. I saw the movie in a completely different light.”