Diane Lane Biography
Summary
"Diane Lane" (born January 22, 1965) is an American film actress. She has been nominated for an Academy Award, two Golden Globe Awards, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and an Emmy Award.
Early life
Lane was born in New York City. Her mother, Colleen Farrington, was a night club singer and "Playboy" centerfold (Miss October 1957) who was also known as 'Colleen Price'. Her father, Burton Eugene Lane, was a Manhattan drama coach who ran an acting workshop with John Cassavetes, worked as a cab driver, and later taught humanities at City College. When Lane was 13 days old, her parents split up and her mother went to Mexico and obtained a divorce while retaining custody of her daughter until age 6. Her father got custody of his daughter after Farrington moved to Georgia. Lane and her father lived in a number of residential hotels in New York City and she would ride with him in his taxi.
When Lane was 15, she declared her independence from her father and ran away to Los Angeles for a week with actor and friend Christopher Atkins. Lane remembers, 'It was reckless behavior that comes from having too much independence too young'. She came back and moved in with a friend's family, paying them rent. In 1981, she enrolled in high school after having taken correspondence courses. However, Lane's mother kidnapped her and took the young girl back to Georgia. Lane and her father challenged her mother in court and six weeks later she was back in New York. Lane did not speak to her mother for three years but they have since reconciled.
Career
Lane's maternal grandmother, Agnes Scott, was a three-times married Pentecostal preacher, and Lane was influenced by the theatricality of her grandmother's sermons. Lane began acting professionally at the age of six at the La MaMa Experimental Theater Club in New York, where she appeared in an acclaimed production of "Medea" and at 12 she had a role in Joseph Papp's production of "The Cherry Orchard" with Meryl Streep. Also at this time, Lane was enrolled in an accelerated program at Hunter College High School and was put on notice when her grades suffered from her busy schedule. At thirteen, she turned down a role in "Runaways" on Broadway to make her feature film debut opposite Sir Laurence Olivier in "A Little Romance". At fourteen, Lane was featured on the cover of "Time" declaring her one of Hollywood's 'Whiz Kids'.
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", starring with future movie stars Matt Dillon, Tom Cruise, Rob Lowe, and Patrick Swayze, and "Rumble Fish", starring Dillon, Mickey Rourke, and Nicolas Cage. Subsequently, Andy Warhol proclaimed Lane, 'the undisputed female lead of Hollywood's new rat pack'. However, the two films that could have catapulted her to star status, "Streets of Fire" (she turned down "Splash" for this film) and "The Cotton Club", were both commercial and critical failures and her career languished as a result.
She returned to the business to make "The Big Town" and "Lady Beware" but did not garner serious acclaim until 1989s 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. She enjoyed positive critical notices for her performance in the independent film "My New Gun", which was well-received at the Cannes Film Festival. She went on to appear as actress Paulette Goddard in Sir Richard Attenborough's big-budget biopic of Charles Chaplin.
Lane won further praise for her role in 1999s "A Walk on the Moon", opposite Viggo Mortensen. One reviewer wrote, 'Lane, after years in post-teenaged-career limbo, is meltingly effective'. The film's director Tony Goldwyn and producer Dustin Hoffman wanted Lane for the role of housewife Pearl even though she did not look or sound Jewish. Goldwyn said of the actress, 'There's also this potentially volcanic sexuality that is in no way self-conscious or opportunistic. I thought all those things mattered more than her looking Jewish'. Lane earned an Independent Spirit Award nomination for Best Female Lead. At this time, Lane was interested in making a film about actress Jean Seberg in which she would play Seberg.
In 2002, she starred in "Unfaithful", drama film directed by Adrian Lyne adapted from the French film "La Femme infidèle". Lane played a housewife who indulges in an adulterous fling with a mysterious book dealer. The film featured several sex scenes and Lyne's repeated takes for these scenes were very demanding for the actors involved, especially for Lane who had to be emotionally and physically fit for the scenes. "Unfaithful" received largely mixed-to-negative reviews, though Lane earned widespread praise for her performance. "Entertainment Weekly" critic Owen Gleiberman said, 'Lane, in the most urgent performance of her career, is a revelation. The play of lust, romance, degradation, and guilt on her face is the movie's real story'. She followed that film up with "Under the Tuscan Sun", based on the best-selling book by Frances Mayes.
Recently, Lane has expressed frustration with being typecast and is 'gunning for something that's not so sympathetic. I need to be a bitch, and I need to be in a comedy. I've decided. No more Miss Nice Guy'. The actress has even contemplated quitting acting and spending more time with her family if she is unable to get these kinds of roles. She said in an interview, 'I can't do anything official. My agents won't let me. Between you and me, I don't have anything else coming out'.
Awards
Four days before the New York Film Critics Circle's vote, Lane was given a career tribute by the Film Society of Lincoln Center. A day before that, Lyne held a dinner for the actress at the Four Seasons Hotel. Critics and award voters were invited to both. She went on to win the National Society of Film Critics, the New York Film Critics Circle awards and was nominated for a Golden Globe and an Academy Award for Best Actress. In 2003, she was named ShoWest's 2003 Female Star of the Year.
She ranked at #79 on VH1's 100 Greatest Kid Stars. She was ranked #45 on AskMen.com's Top 99 Most Desirable Women in 2005, #85 in 2006 and #98 in 2007.
Personal life
In the early 1980s, Lane dated actors Timothy Hutton, Christopher Atkins, Matt Dillon, and later rock star Jon Bon Jovi. After the commercial and critical failure of "The Cotton Club", Lane dropped out of the movie business and lived with her mother in Georgia. Lane met actor Christopher Lambert in Paris while promoting Coppola's film. They had a brief affair and split up. They met again two years later in Rome to make a film together, entitled "After the Rain", and in two weeks they were a couple again. Lane and Lambert married in October 1988 in Santa Fe, New Mexico. They had a daughter, Eleanor Jasmine Lambert (born September 5, 1993), and were divorced following a prolonged separation in 1994. While making "Judge Dredd", Lane began dating the film's director, Danny Cannon.
Lane became engaged to actor Josh Brolin in July 2003 and they were married on August 15, 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 described the incident as a 'misunderstanding'.
Filmography
"A Little Romance" (1979)
"Touched by Love" (1980)
"Cattle Annie and Little Britches" (1981)
"Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains" (1981)
"National Lampoon Goes to the Movies" (1982)
"Six Pack" (1982)
"The Outsiders" (1983)
"Rumble Fish" (1983)
"Streets of Fire" (1984)
"The Cotton Club" (1984)
"Lady Beware" (1987)
"The Big Town" (1987)
"Priceless Beauty" (1988)
"Lonesome Dove" (1988)
"Vital Signs" (1990)
"Knight Moves" (1992)
"My New Gun" (1992)
"The Setting Sun" (1992)
"Chaplin" (1992)
"Indian Summer" (1993)
"Streetcar Named Desire (1995)
"Judge Dredd" (1995)
"Wild Bill" (1996)
"Jack" (1996)
"Mad Dog Time" (1996)
"The Only Thrill" (1997)
"Murder at 1600" (1997)
"Gunshy" (1998)
"Grace & Glorie" (1998)
"A Walk on the Moon" (1999)
"My Dog Skip" (2000)
"The Perfect Storm" (2000)
"Hardball" (2001)
"The Glass House" (2001)
"Unfaithful" (2002)
"Searching for Debra Winger" (2002) (documentary)
"Under the Tuscan Sun" (2003)
"Fierce People" (2005)
"Must Love Dogs" (2005)
"Hollywoodland" (2006)
"Untraceable" (2008)
"Jumper" (2008)
"Killshot" (2008)
"Nights in Rodanthe" (2008)
External links
Credit
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article about Diane Lane.
