Bette Midler is sharing more memories of her late friend Diane Keaton, who died Saturday at the age of 79.
Midler, appearing on Tuesday’s Late Show With Stephen Colbert, called Keaton “inimitable.”
“There was something about her that was completely and utterly magical. She was completely her own person,” Midler said of Keaton. “I’ve never seen a single comic or actress who actually could imitate her … so authentically herself.”
Midler recalled her first day filming with Keaton and Goldie Hawn on the 1996 comedy First Wives Club.
“I was so intimidated,” Midler said, saying that both Keaton and Hawn had more film experience than she did at that point. “We sat there and they started telling stories, and I’m telling you, I never laughed so hard in my life. It really was brilliant and magical.”
Midler also praised Keaton’s signature style as well as her work as a writer and photographer.
“And of course, she was brilliantly dressed,” Midler said of Keaton. “She’s one of the few people I ever followed on Instagram, because it was so brilliant, the photographs. She was a photographer and she also wrote a number of books. The books are wonderful, very moving, about her family.”
Midler previously took to Instagram to remember Keaton shortly after news broke of her death.
“The brilliant, beautiful, extraordinary Diane Keaton has died,” Midler wrote on Saturday. “I cannot tell you how unbearably sad this makes me. She was hilarious, a complete original, and completely without guile, or any of the competitiveness one would have expected from such a star.”
Keaton died Saturday at the age of 79, as it was reported that an ambulance arrived at her home and took her to a hospital shortly after 8 a.m.
In her own Instagram post, Hawn said she was “blessed to make” First Wives Club with Keaton. “Our days starting with coffee in the makeup trailer, laughing and joking, right through to the very last day of filming. It was a roller coaster of love,” she wrote.
“You’ve left us with a trail of fairy dust, filled with particles of light and memories beyond imagination,” Hawn added. “How do we say goodbye? What words can come to mind when your heart is broken? You never liked praise, so humble, but now you can’t tell me to ‘shut up’ honey. There was, and will be, no one like you. You stole the hearts of the world and shared your genius with millions, making films that made us laugh and cry in ways only you could.”
First Wives Club starred Keaton, Midler and Hawn as divorcées seeking revenge against their ex-husbands who left them for younger women.
