Gorgeous Diane Lane seems to spend an inordinate amount of her time on the big screen looking for love. Her search resulted in murder when her screen husband Richard Gere killed her lover in the 2002 thriller Unfaithful (for which Lane received a Best Actress Oscar nomination). And, of course, she was searching for Mr. Right in the 2003 love story Under the Tuscan Sun, based on the best-seller. And now in her new romantic comedy, Must Love Dogs, she plays a divorcee who pursues John Cusack after meeting him via the Internet. (See Film Clips for a review.)
In real life, Lane is the mother of 12-year-old Eleanor from her first marriage to actor Christopher Lambert. She appears to have found true happiness in the arms of actor Josh Brolin, who of course has that well known stepmother Barbra Streisand (married to his dad, James Brolin).
The 40-year-old Lane, the daughter of the late acting coach Burt Lane, was six when she first appeared on stage; at 13, she starred opposite no less a personage than Laurence Olivier in A Little Romance. In l983, Francis Coppola hired her to star with a bunch of up and coming adolescent actors in Rumble Fish and The Outsiders. From there, she moved onto more adult roles in The Cotton Club and Judge Dredd. But it was her role as Gere's cheating wife in Unfaithful that turned her into a sexy leading lady.
Ivor Davis: Is it possible to find love on the Internet?
Diane Lane: If you sit at your computer long enough and can be really thorough in communication and keep it on track and not go off on some tangent. The proclivity that I've seen with kids especially -- and there's an inner child in all of us -- is that they go off on a tangent.
Davis: Have you ever tried Internet dating?
Lane: Never. It's scary.
Davis: How did you meet Josh Brolin?
Lane: Strangely enough, we met when I was pregnant with my daughter. Josh had made a film with my then-husband. It was like hello at lunch. Flash forward nine years or something, and we met in this restaurant after a premiere. He was like, "Hi. Remember me? I met you nine years ago with Christopher [Lambert]." I was like, "Oh yes. Of course. How are you? What are you up to?" We started talking about our kids because it turned out that he had a daughter who was the same age as my daughter, and now they go to school together.
Davis: Was it love at second sight?
Lane: No. Funnily enough, it was e-mail. I had never had anyone that I was communicating with that was a romantic by e-mail. The first e-mail that he sent me, I said, "Oh, you're a writer." And I was right because that's his passion. He loves to write and to read. He got me writing.
Davis: Wasn't he also a child actor?
Lane: That's right. I never saw The Goonies until I was with him, and he's never seen a lot of my movies, which actually helps the relationship a lot. We don't know that each other are actors at all. It's total denial.
Davis: When you were a single mother, did you have any bad dates?
Lane: No. My daughter pretty much kept me out of the dating pool, which I'm grateful for. I still feel amazed that I'm able to don three hats as a working person, parent and partner. Oh my gosh, that's massive. The important thing, I think, is to prioritize. So I hope that I'm as popular in these other tasks of life as it seems to be going in the professional department at this moment.
Davis: How has your life changed since last year's marriage?
Lane: It's incalculable. I went from being claustrophobic to agoraphobic or whatever that extreme change would be. I was in such a small bubble and now my house is full of people and it's a shared life. It's not even my house anymore. It's their house and they all have rooms. I don't. I'm just in the kitchen.
Davis: Do you love it?
Lane: I really appreciate it because I was watching my daughter's childhood and seeing how similar it was to mine in the sense of one parent at a time and no siblings. It was pretty quiet around my house, but that's not the case any longer. You can't hear around there, it's so loud.
Davis: Is it fun having Barbra Streisand as a mother-in-law?
Lane: It's delicious at Thanksgiving. I can tell you that.
Dinner every year at the Streisand house.
It's the Brolin-Streisand house.
Davis: What was the appeal of this role?
Lane: Well, Gary's [writer-director Gary David Goldberg] faith that I was the one to play her.
Davis: Didn't he have you in mind for the part?
Lane: I guess he's still telling people that. That's a big compliment. I believe that he felt I could play her the way that he wanted it played. I'd trust him on this because it's not a genre that I have a lot of history with. So you're working with the director who knows what he wants it to sound like and that helps me very much.
Davis: Do you have strong feelings about the dearth of roles for 40-plus actresses?
Lane: I was allowed to work when I was 16 and they're still allowing me to work. It's been an unusual or uncommon situation to be experiencing more success now than then because usually it's all in the youth market. There are a lot of people who have grown up with me and that's sweet. People still come up to me and go, "A Little Romance." I'm like, "Wow. That's before they recorded sound. Thank you for remembering."
Davis: Aren't they re-releasing The Outsiders this fall on DVD?
Lane: I know. It's like the 50th anniversary or something. God.
Davis: You, Matt Dillon and Tom Cruise are the only three people who are still working in movies from that film.
Lane: What about Rob Lowe, Emilio Estevez? There was also Patrick Swayze.
Davis: But they don't star in movies anymore.
Lane: Well, I can't touch that one.
Davis: What do you remember about that movie?
Lane: It was a great time. What a great place to be when you're 17, surrounded by those guys. It's funny to remember and have that on them and they have it on me, too. "I knew you when" -- that whole thing.
Davis: How do you keep looking so good?
Lane: A smile. Anyone smiling automatically looks better. People think that I'm angry when I'm not smiling so I have to keep smiling.