Goldie Hawn gets emotional while paying tribute to her late "First Wives Club" costar Diane Keaton: 'She was like a force of nature'

Goldie Hawn expressed profound sorrow following the passing of her longtime friend and colleague, Diane Keaton. Both actresses began their careers in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and they famously appeared together in the 1996 hit film First Wives Club. Beyond their work on screen, Hawn revealed that they were also neighbors, making Keaton's death on October 11 even more shocking for her.

Speaking at The Hollywood Reporter's Women in Entertainment event, Hawn recalled, tearfully, their close connection: "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. We would laugh, because we were so close, and literally, I said, 'Let me get a megaphone.'" She described the comfort of knowing Keaton, renowned for films such as Annie Hall, Father of the Bride, Baby Boom, and Something's Gotta Give, was just nearby.

Hawn shared that she learned of Keaton's death while tending to her rose garden. "I just looked down at her house and thought, 'She can't be gone. She just cannot be gone.' No one like that should ever die. She brought so much joy, so much life, so much exuberance. She was like lightning in a bottle. There wasn't anything she couldn't do. She was just an extraordinary human being," Hawn said.

Hours after Keaton passed away, Hawn took to social media to honor her friend, writing, "We agreed to grow old together, and one day, maybe live together with all our girlfriends. 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. Im going to miss the hell out of you."

Bette Midler, who also starred in First Wives Club, reflected on Keatons unique spirit, calling her "hilarious, a complete original, and completely without guile, or any of the competitiveness one would have expected from such a star. What you saw was who she was."

Author: Noah Whitman