Amy Sussman/Getty; Rodin Eckenroth/WireImage
Goldie Hawnwas deeply affected by the death ofDiane Keaton.
The women, who began their careers around the same time — the late '60s for Hawn, the early '70s for Keaton — famously costarred in the hit 1996 movieFirst Wives Club. But, as Hawn noted in an emotional speech Wednesday atThe Hollywood Reporter's Women in Entertainment event, they were also neighbors.
So it was a shock to Hawn, she explained, when Keaton, 79,died Oct. 11.
"Diane lived right below me. My house was higher up, and I went down, and I said, you know, we can talk to each other," Hawn recalled tearfully from the podium. "We would laugh, because we were so close, and, literally, I said, 'Let me get a megaphone.'"
Hawn said there was a comfort in knowing the star of movies includingAnnie Hall,Father of the Bride,Baby Boom, andSomething's Gotta Givewas nearby.
"It was just the greatest thing knowing that she was just below me," Hawn said. "I would go and do my flowers and stuff, my rose garden, and it was right on the edge there. And I remember looking over and wondering, 'What in the world is she doing now?' She was always on my mind. She was so close to me."
She was in her rose garden when she found out that Keaton had died.
"I happened to learn in my backyard. And I went over to my backyard, to my rose garden, and I just looked down at her house and [thought],She can't be gone. She just cannot be gone," Hawn said. "No one like that should ever die. She just brought so much joy, so much life, so much exuberance. She was like lightning in a bottle. There wasn't anything that she couldn't do. There wasn't any world that she couldn't live in. She was just an extraordinary human being."
Paramount/Courtesy Everett
Get your daily dose of entertainment news, celebrity updates, and what to watch with ourEW Dispatch newsletter.
Hours after Keaton's death, Hawnpaid tribute to heron social media.
"We agreed to grow old together, and one day, maybe live together with all our girlfriends," she wrote. "Well, we never got to live together, but we did grow older together. Who knows... maybe in the next life. Shine your fairy dust up there, girlfriend. I'm going to miss the hell out of you."
TheirFirst Wives Clubcostar Bette Midler alsolamented the loss.
Midler called Keaton "hilarious, a complete original, and completely without guile, or any of the competitiveness one would have expected from such a star." She added, "What you saw was who she was."
Read the original article onEntertainment Weekly