What She Is Known For

A veteran of the entertainment industry, Diane Lane made her cinematic debut as a teenager, opposite the legendary Laurence Olivier in 1979’s A Little Romance. Diane’s seen her share of duds (she was in Judge Dredd. . . enough said), which has undoubtedly made the recent revival of her career (in flicks like The Perfect Storm and Unfaithful) all the more rewarding.

2005 Career Highlight

Having just married actor Josh Brolin in August of 2004, Diane presumably spent much of ’05 adjusting to life as a newlywed. She did take time out to film a romantic comedy, Must Love Dogs, with John Cusack and Christopher Plummer. Diane also made a few requisite appearances on talk shows, such as The View and Live with Regis and Kelly, and even popped up at the Tony Awards as a presenter. Nevertheless, the pickings were slim for Lane fans in 2005.

2006 Career Forecast

2006, on the other hand, promises to be a very busy time for Diane, with three films scheduled for release. Truth, Justice, and the American Way is the highly anticipated true-life story of ‘50s Superman actor George Reeves, and costars Ben Affleck, Adrien Brody and Bob Hoskins. Killshot, adapted from Elmore Leonard’s classic novel, casts Diane opposite Mickey Rourke and Tom Jane, while Fierce People features an eclectic assortment of actors, such as Donald Sutherland, Chris Evans and Elizabeth Perkins.

quote

"There's a persona to being an actress.... That could put anyone into the shrink's office. Especially if you're fifteen, sixteen, eighteen years old going through that; realizing that the job is to have a persona."

-Diane Lane

biography

Diane Lane was born in New York City on January 22, 1965, to acting coach father Burt Lane and nightclub singer/centerfold Colleen Farrington. With those two for parents, it was almost genetically inevitable that Diane would possess a mix of acting ability, stunning good looks, and smoldering sexuality. Of course, she would have to grow into those last two attributes.

The acting ability came almost as soon as she was born, and by age six Diane had made her stage debut in acclaimed theater director Andrei Serbian's Medea. Her performance so captivated Serbian that he continued to cast her in his productions for the next five years.

a new hollywood princess

By 1976 her reputation as a talented and capable child star landed her in Joseph Papp's productions of The Cherry Orchard and Agamemnon at the Lincoln Center in New York. Performing at such a distinguished venue meant that her reviews would be read throughout the United States, most notably in Hollywood.

Film director George Roy Hill cast young Diane to star opposite Sir Lawrence Olivier in his 1978 feature film A Little Romance. Despite the film's critical praise, its box office success was mediocre at best. But Olivier was very vocal in press interviews about how wonderful an actress his young co-star was. He even went so far as to call her the new Grace Kelly. Eventually, all of this media hype placed Diane on the cover of Time in August of 1979 at the age of fourteen.

Expectations were running high for Diane's follow-up projects and none of them lived up to their promise. Touched by Love (1980), Cattle Annie and Little Britches (1981), National Lampoon Goes to the Movies (1981), Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains (1981), and Six Pack (1982) were all box-office duds.

not making a splash

With the shine of her star fading, Diane began to take on roles with smaller paychecks and bigger opportunities to grow as an actor. Roles in two Francis Ford Coppola movies, Rumble Fish (1983) and The Outsiders (1983), proved that Diane was more than capable of taking on adult roles, and once again she was extremely hot property. Coppola even admitted to always having had a crush on her, even when she was a young actress.

With studio executives falling over themselves to offer her a multiple-picture deal, she was offered the lead role in three big budget Hollywood epics. Perhaps trying to exercise some of the judgment she lacked as a child actor, she passed on the first picture. On paper, the movie seemed destined for failure: "a mermaid out of water story" starring an unknown TV actor. Sadly for Diane, the movie was the blockbuster success Splash and the actor she passed on was Tom Hanks. The movies she did accept were Streets of Fire (1984) and The Cotton Club (1984), both high-budget, high-profile failures.

Diane spent the next three years in a self-imposed exile from acting, making her return in the little-known picture, The Big Town (1987). The film served as the formal beginning of her comeback, but it wasn't until 1989's Lonesome Dove that America welcomed her back as a star.

Her role as Lorena Wood, the whore with a heart of gold, in that epic mini-series garnered her an Emmy nomination, and yet another stint as a hot commodity among film producers, although this time she was wanted as a supporting actress rather than a leading lady.

building a budding career

Desperate to avoid falling from grace again, Diane carefully selected smaller roles in "safe" films like 1992's Chaplin and 1993's Indian Summer. Since 1995, Diane began working in a series of big budget, high-profile films, such as Judge Dredd (1995), the Robin Williams vehicle Jack (in 1996, and incidentally directed by Francis Ford Coppola), and Murder at 1600 (1997). Though the films were all reasonably successful, none of them turned Diane into a household name.

The string of films that has helped turn Diane into a major star began with her Spirit Award winning performance of a frustrated and adulterous 1960s housewife in A Walk on the Moon (1999). That role may have won her the industry acclaim, but it was her role in the $600 million plus grossing blockbuster A Perfect Storm, which brought her back to the public eye.

new faith in diane

Since the runaway success of that film, Diane has put forth starring efforts in The Glass House (2001) and the box-office hit Hardball, which both opened on the same day, in 2001. Despite the success of those two films, it has been her role in the sexy thriller Unfaithful (2002) that looks to be the defining moment of her career.

The film was tops at the box office and there are rumblings about a possible Oscar nomination for Lane's turn as Richard Gere's cheating wife. It seems that after twenty years of stop-and-go success, Diane Lane is finally fulfilling the starry prophecy that Time laid out for her back in August of 1979.

As for her personal life, she has a daughter, Eleanor, with her ex-husband, actor Christopher Lambert.