Goldie Hawn broke down in tears while paying tribute to Diane Keaton at an event on Wednesday.

Addressing the crowd at The Hollywood Reporter's Women in Entertainment gala in Los Angeles, the Cactus Flower actress took to the stage to honour her The First Wives Club co-star. Keaton died at the age of 79 in October.

Reflecting on her longtime friendship with the Annie Hall actress, Hawn noted that they lived close by for many years.

"Then it came time when she passed, and I happened to learn when I was in my backyard, and I went over to my backyard, to my rose garden," she began, appearing emotional. "I just looked down. 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."

Hawn went on to describe Keaton as "an extraordinary human being".

"Yeah, she's an amazing actress. Look what she can do. Look at this natural aspect of how her body and mind work together and how she's able to bring us joy and give us emotion and all of it. But look what else she did. She wrote books. She was interested in many things, not just acting and producing, but also directing," the 80-year-old continued, her voice cracking.

To conclude her speech, Hawn likened the late Hollywood icon to being like "a little lightning bug".

"She would fly up over here and you'd go try to catch her. (But) she was on a journey. She never looked back, and she was a pure, pure, whatever you wanna call it, you call it stars or - I think that she is a star. We can have a fantasy; what I do is that stars are really people who died a long time ago. They did something really good for the world. I think maybe it's where she is right now," she added.

Elsewhere in the gala, Sarah Paulson also remembered her friend of 25 years, whom she met on the set of the 1999 film, The Other Sister.

"I really wasn't sure I wanted to do this, show up on a Wednesday morning to talk about one of the greatest human beings the world has ever known," she declared. "A magical creature who somehow, horribly, is no longer with us... A person beloved by the world. Her name was Diane Keaton Hall, and she was surely one of the great loves of my life."