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Diane Lane (born January 22, 1965) is an Academy Award-nominated American actress. Golden Globe and Oscar-nominated actress Diane Lane grew up in the spotlight of New York’s downtown theater scene and, following several teen film appearances as a favorite of director Francis Ford Coppola – including such roles in “Rumble Fish” and “The Outsiders,” she was heralded as Hollywood’s most promising young starlet. But Tinseltown generally failed to match Lane’s classical training with deserving roles, and the young actress found herself facing a career centered on her sex appeal. Instead, Lane opted for the stronger female characters often found in TV movies and independent films, eventually enjoying the bulk of her critical success in more mature roles after the age of 35, when the hit adulterous drama, “Unfaithful” (2002) landed the actress firmly on the A-list map after more than 20 years of quality work to her name. A stage veteran before she made her first films as a teenager, Diane Lane landed on the cover of TIME magazine in a 1979 profile of rising child stars. Few of those featured, however, were as lucky as Lane in making the transition to adult roles, and while her career has had the requisite peaks and valleys, she has continued to land challenging and diverse roles ranging from a frontier prostitute in the acclaimed miniseries "Lonesome Dove" (CBS, 1989) to sexually awakening Jewish housewife of "A Walk on the Moon" (1999) to her Oscar-nominated turn as a straying wife in the provocative "Unfaithful" (2002) . Lane was born in New York City, the daughter of Colleen Farrington, a night club singer and Playboy centerfold who was also known as "Colleen Price", and Burton Eugene Lane, a drama coach who also worked as a cab driver. Lane's maternal grandmother, Agnes Scott, was a Pentecostal preacher, and Lane was influenced by the theatricality of her grandmother's sermons. Lane was raised by her father after her parents divorced while she was still a baby. The only daughter of stage actor and drama coach Burt Lane and model-singer Colleen Farrington, Lane was raised by her father in New York following her parents divorce when she was still an infant. Growing up around the theater scene, it was not long before Lane joined in on the action. At the age of six, she held down a role in "Medea," staged by the famed La Mama Theater Company. Her remarkable preteen years also included appearances in “The Cherry Orchard” alongside Meryl Streep, international touring with La Mama, a lead in the Tony-nominated musical "Runaways,” and various productions with the New York Shakespeare Festival. At the age of 13, she made her film debut with "A Little Romance" (1979), as a precocious American girl who experiences first love with an equally gifted French boy, abetted by an eccentric Englishman. That she shared screen time with none other than Sir Laurence Olivier and proved a strong and engaging presence in holding her own against the acting great helped propel her career and made her the "It” girl of the moment. Only a year later, the 14-year-old found herself celebrated on the cover of Time magazine and declared “the next great young actress.” Lane began acting professionally at the age of six at the La Mama Experimental Theatre in New York, where she appeared in acclaimed productions of Medea and The Cherry Orchard, among others. At thirteen, she made her film debut opposite Sir Laurence Olivier in A Little Romance, and at fourteen was featured on the cover of Time. Predictions of Lane’s breakout success were a bit premature, as the actress opted for less mainstream projects including PBS’ “Great Performances” series and the feature film “Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains” (1981), a rarely seen but much beloved cult classic in which she and Laura Dern helm a punk band. Cameos by future punk legends like Steve Jones and Black Randy only added to the film’s future allure as an alternative culture time capsule. She offered strong supporting roles in the western “Cattle Annie and Little Britches” (1981) and TV movies “Child Bride of Short Creek” (NBC, 1981) and "Miss All-American” (CBS, 1982). Then she caught the eye of renowned director Francis Ford Coppola and her life changed overnight. The “Godfather” helmer tapped Lane’s all-American looks and self-reliant spirit for a pair of S.E. Hinton adaptations, both released in 1983 – "The Outsiders" and “Rumble Fish." In both, she starred opposite Matt Dillon in portraits of 1950s teen life that were a startling contrast to the idyllic suburban image of the times represented in popular retro TV shows like “Happy Days” (ABC, 1974-1984). Coppola’s subsequent casting of Lane in "The Cotton Club" (1984), however, proved a misstep. At only 18, she was clearly too young to play a world-weary gangster's moll who tempts a musician into an affair, and there was a palpable lack of chemistry between her and co-star Richard Gere. “The Cotton Club” failed to create a career-making role for the clearly talented Lane, as did Walter Hill's muddled musical "Streets of Fire" (1984), where she starred as a rock singing diva. Having already experienced so many career ups-and-downs by the age of 20, the financially stable actress took a big screen hiatus to regroup and rethink her career. She was obviously gorgeous enough to parlay her looks into an endless stream of throwaway roles as wives and girlfriends in blockbusters, but this child of the serious dramatic stage knew that it would not be enough to satisfy her creativity. Of her handful of appearances throughout the remainder of the 1980s, the undisputed standout was the award-winning TV film adaptation of Larry McMurtry's "Lonesome Dove” (CBS, 1989). Lane was nominated for an Emmy for her portrayal of the dissatisfied and ambitious prostitute who accompanies a group of men on a cattle drive. One of few child actors to make a successful transition into adult roles, Lane made a hit with audiences in the back-to-back cult films The Outsiders and Rumble Fish. However the two films that could have catapulted her to star status, Streets of Fire and The Cotton Club, were both box office flops and her career languished as a result. It was not until 1989's popular and critically acclaimed TV mini-series Lonesome Dove that Lane made another big impression on a sizable audience. She was nominated for an Emmy Award for the role. Lane won further praise for her role in 1999's A Walk on the Moon, opposite Viggo Mortensen. Continuing to plow ahead with introspective performances, Lane co-starred as the daughter of a man who may have been a Nazi sympathizer in the 1990 HBO drama "Descending Angel" and made the most of her limited screen time playing silent film star Paulette Goddard in Richard Attenborough's reverent biopic "Chaplin" (1992). A co-starring role alongside then-husband Christopher Lambert in “Knight Moves” (1992) was generally overlooked, but the wistful “group of friends” drama “Indian Summer” (1993) showcased a wonderful side of Lane’s talent and appeal, though the small film did not attract a large audience. Lane returned to the small screen for a co-starring role opposite Bill Pullman in the TV remake of "The Virginian" (TNT, 2000) before a high-profile role as Mark Wahlberg's land-bound girlfriend in the well-received "The Perfect Storm" (2000). She followed up with a relatively minor role in the critically-lauded sleeper "My Dog Skip" (2000). But it was "Unfaithful” a psychological and often erotic look at a woman who embarks on a torrid affair with a young lover and ultimately results in tragedy that Lane was finally cast in a role that perfectly showcased her remarkable talents. In 2002, Lane was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in Unfaithful, and was honored for her work in that film by The New York and The National Society of Film Critics. She followed that film up with Under the Tuscan Sun (2003), based on the best-selling book by Frances Mayes. Her sensual, natural and conflicted performance better, actually, than the movie itself won her heaps of accolades, including an Academy Award nomination as Best Actress. Now firmly established as a bankable leading lady and at an age when most actresses were seeing their careers wind down Lane's follow-up was the lighter-weight romance "Under the Tuscan Sun" (2003), based on the popular book by author Frances Mayes, in which Lane played a 35-year-old San Francisco writer who makes an impulsive home purchase in Tuscany and discovers romance as she renovates her dilapidated new house. The role earned her a second Golden Globe nomination. Offscreen, Lane’s own love life was reignited with a new marriage to actor Josh Brolin. Onscreen, she undertook her first out-and-out romantic comedy, starring opposite John Cusack in the flop “Must Love Dogs” (2005), as a recently divorced kindergarten teacher looking for love. She ranked at #79 on VH1's 100 Greatest Kid Stars. Lane again found herself in the critical crosshairs for “Hollywoodland” (2006), an intriguing look into the tawdry life and mysterious death of “Superman” actor George Reeves. Lane stood out as C-list actress Toni Mannix, wife of MGM executive Eddie Mannix, whose affair with the actor was of interest to investigations surrounding Reeves’ apparent suicide. The fact that Lane had to portray a woman much older than herself was not lost on critics. Lane’s next outing as a film lead was the 2008 thriller “Untraceable” in which she essayed an FBI cybercrime specialist investigating a serial killer. The film was generally panned by critics for wasting its talented cast in a vehicle seemingly built for excessive violence. Lane was slated to appear in three more films over the busy year, including the sci-fi drama “Jumper,” the Elmore Leonard adaptation “Killshot” and “Nights in Rodanthe,” in which Lane co-starred alongside Richard Gere (for the third time) in a romantic tale of a stormy weekend at a country inn. In the early 1980s, Lane graduated from a high school for working children in New York, and dated a musician named Rick who attended the same school. She then dated rock star Jon Bon Jovi and she was married to actor Christopher Lambert from 1988 to 1994. They had a daughter, Eleanor Jasmine Lambert (born September 5, 1993), and were divorced following a prolonged separation. Lane married actor Josh Brolin on August 14, 2004. On December 20 of that year, she called police after an altercation with him, and he was arrested on a misdemeanor charge of domestic battery. Lane declined to press charges, however, and the couple's spokesperson characterized the incident as a "misunderstanding". |
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