• by Gord Hotchkiss , Featured Contributor, Yesterday

It’s been a tough couple of months for those of us who grew up in the ‘60s and ‘70s. Last month, we had to say goodbye to Robert Redford. And then, just over a week ago, we bid farewell to Diane Keaton.

It’s always sobering to lose those cultural touchstones of our youth. It forces us to reckon with our own mortality.  We tend to conflate the age difference between us and those we watch when we’re young, so when they’re gone, we naturally wonder how much time we have left.

This makes it hard to lose any of the icons of our youth, but these two -- for me -- felt different: sadder, more personal. It was as if I had lost people I knew.

I know there are many who swooned for Redford. But I know firsthand that an entire generation of male (and possibly female) adolescents had a crush on Keaton’s Annie Hall. Her breakout role was one of those characters that carved a permanent place in our psyche. “Annie Hall-esque” became a descriptor we could all immediately understand -- quirky, cute, with insecurities that were rendered as charming. We all wanted to be her port in a storm.

Keaton and Redford seemed like people we could know, given the chance. We may have just known them through a screen, but they used those platforms to build a connection that felt real and human.

I wondered what it was about these two, in particular, that made the connection real. It was something that went beyond their talent, although their talent was undeniable. One only has to watch an example of Keaton’s master acting with Al Pacino in "The Godfather: Part Two." After a visit with her estranged children, she is being pushed out the door before ex-husband Michael Corleone comes home, but he walks in while she’s still standing in the doorway. No words are said between the two for almost a minute. Everything is conveyed just by their expressions. It’s a scene that still rips my heart out.

It was also not about celebrity. In fact, Redford and Keaton both eschewed the life of a celebrity. Redford found his life away from Hollywood in the ranch lands of Montana. And in typical Keaton fashion, the actress just kind of ignored being a celebrity. In an interview with Vanity Fair in 1985, she said, "I think I like to deny it (being famous). It suits me to deny it.... Look, I don't think it's such a big deal. I don't think I'm that big a thing."

So, if it wasn’t their talent or their celebrity status, what was it about Keaton and Redford that forged such a strong bond with many of us? 

First, it was about consistency. They were judicious about what they shared with us, but what they did choose to share was rock-solid and reliable. Whatever was at the core of who they were, it shone through their performances. There was a foundation to each Redford and Keaton performance that was both essential and relatable. You couldn’t imagine anyone else playing these roles. 

The authenticity of their humanity was another factor. Robert Redford’s acting style was restrained and typically underplayed, but his charismatic good looks sometimes got in the way of the depth and vulnerability he tried to bring to his performances. He famously tried out for the title role in 1967’s “The Graduate” (which went to Dustin Hoffman), but was turned down by director Mike Nichols because he couldn’t see Redford as a believable “loser.” “Let’s put it this way,” Nichols reportedly said. “Have you ever struck out with a girl?” “What do you mean?” Redford replied.

Keaton was a little different. She embodied vulnerability in every role she played, and we loved her imperfections. The characters Diane Keaton played were neither aspirational nor cautionary. Instead, they were revelatory. We connected with them, because we could see ourselves in them.

Finally, we knew there was depth to both Diane Keaton and Robert Redford. They believed passionately in certain things, and weren’t afraid to speak out on behalf of those beliefs. I would have loved to have a conversation with either of them about serious issues, because I would have walked away with a perspective worth discovering.

It’s sadly ironic that for two icons who shared so much screen time with us, they never shared it with each other. They were tentatively scheduled to appear in a 2012 holiday comedy, but it never made it to the screen.

I will miss having both Robert Redford and Diane Keaton in my world. They made it better.