Goldie Hawn delivers tearful tribute to Diane Keaton: ‘She was like lightning in a bottle’

Goldie Hawn delivered a tribute to her late co-star Diane Keaton in a tearful speech at The Hollywood Reporter's Women in Entertainment event this week.

Keaton, who starred alongside Hawn in the 1996 movie First Wives Club, died in October at the age of 79.

In addition to working together and enjoying simultaneous rises in the world of show business, Hawn and Keaton were also neighbours.

Hawn recalled: “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.’

“It was just the greatest thing knowing that she was just below me,” she continued. “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.”

The Sugarland Express star grew visibly emotional as she recounted learning of Keaton’s death.

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“I happened to learn in my backyard,” she told the audience. “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.

“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.”

Hawn had previously shared a tribute to Keaton on social media in the immediate aftermath of her death.

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“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.”

An acclaimed actor throughout her life, Keaton was known for her multiple collaborations with Woody Allen – including an Oscar-winning turn in Annie Hall – and for roles in films such as The Godfather and Something's Gotta Give.