Renowned actress chokes up while honoring late friend: ‘She was like lightning in a bottle’
Diane Keaton’s death has taken a huge toll on her close friend and fellow actress Goldie Hawn.
Hawn was brought to tears while remembering her late friend during an emotional speech at The Hollywood Reporter’s Women in Entertainment gala in Los Angeles on Wednesday, Dec. 3.
“She was so close to me,” Hawn said during the gala, explaining how the two would talk and share laughs while living right next to each other. “It was just the greatest thing knowing that she was just below me.”
The Golden Globe recipient mentioned how her rose garden was perched just above Keaton’s house, which was where Hawn learned about Keaton’s death earlier this year.
“When she passed, and I happened to learn when I was in my backyard, and I went over to my backyard to my rose garden and I just looked down at her house and said, ‘She can’t be gone. She just cannot be gone. No one like that should ever die,’” Hawn said. “She just brought so much joy, so much life, so much exuberance. She was like lightning in a bottle.”
Hawn continued by saying Keaton was “like a little lightning bug.”
“[She’d] light up over here, and then you’d try to catch her. And then she’d light up over there and you’d go try to catch her. But you couldn’t catch Diane. She was on a journey. She never looked back, and she was a pure, pure, whatever you want to call it, you call it stars or whatever,” Hawn said. “I think that she is a star…What I do is that stars are really people who died a long time ago. They did something really good for the world. I think maybe it’s where she is right now.”
Hawn’s speech came after a video montage of Keaton’s life and career played at the gala. The montage included clips from some of Keaton’s most popular films, including “Annie Hall,” “The Godfather” and “The First Wives Club,” from which Hawn recalled memories filming with Keaton and Bette Midler.
“When we did this movie, we worked together, she was very tenacious,” Hawn said, per The Hollywood Reporter.
“She’s an incredibly hard worker. At the same time, she would come into the makeup trailer, which is my favorite thing, and she had a different hat on every day,” Hawn mentioned while referring to Keaton’s iconic signature style.
“She was just an extraordinary human being. Yeah, she’s an amazing actress. Look what she can do,” Hawn continued. “But look what else she did. She wrote books. She was interested in many things, not just acting and producing, but also directing.”
Keaton died at age 79 at Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, California, on Oct. 11, 2025. Her cause of death was determined as primary bacterial pneumonia, Fox News reported.
Keaton rose to fame in the 1970s, appearing in “The Godfather” movies and collaborating with Woody Allen. The two co-starred in his 1969 Broadway comedy hit “Play It Again, Sam.”
In addition to winning an Academy Award for her “Annie Hall” role, Keaton was Oscar-nominated for best actress for “Reds,” “Something’s Gotta Give” and “Marvin’s Room.” Her other notable roles included “Father of the Bride” and “Baby Boom.”
Keaton’s more recent film roles included “Book Club” and its sequel, “Poms.” “Summer Camp,” co-starring with Kathy Bates and Alfre Woodard in 2024, was her last role.
