Biography - Diane Lane

Diane Lane is one of the most respected and talented of today’s Hollywood beauties, possessing an on-screen poise that made Sir Laurence Olivier compare her to a young Grace Kelly when they appeared together in 1979’s “A Little Romance”. The Oscar-nominated star has appeared in a wide variety of celebrated films, and can be seen this fall alongside Ben Affleck and Adrien Brody in the promising murder mystery “Hollywoodland”.

Lane was born in New York City on January 22, 1965 to acting coach Burt Lane and Playboy centerfold Colleen Farrington. Primarily raised by her father after her parents’ divorce, Lane pursued professional acting as a child, and received critical acclaim for productions of Chekov’s “The Cherry Orchard” and Euripides’ “Medea” at New York’s La Mama Experimental Theatre. Her film debut came in 1979 opposite Sir Laurence Olivier in “A Little Romance”, and the next year saw her grace the cover of Time Magazine. Lane went on to star in a string of box office failures including “Cattle Annie and Little Britches” before Francis Ford Coppola rescued her career with his complementary teen films “The Outsiders” and “Rumble Fish”. Both films were mild hits, and have since become cult classics, but Lane’s career stumbled again with the failures of the rock-n-roll opus “Streets of Fire” and Coppola’s overwrought “The Cotton Club”.

Worn-out and overexposed, Lane took a break from acting in the mid-80s before bouncing back with “Lady Beware”, “The Big Town”, and the enormously popular 1989 TV mini-series “Lonesome Dove”, which put Lane back in the spotlight. Never a performer to pick projects exclusively by their box office potential, Lane starred in smaller, more personal films in the 90s, including “The Setting Sun”, “Indian Summer”, and “The Only Thrill”. Lane also made some impressive appearances in big-budget films like the Sylvester Stallone vehicle “Judge Dredd”, Coppola’s “Jack” with Robin Williams, and the political thriller “Murder at 1600”. 1999’s “Walk on the Moon”, an indie melodrama co-starring Viggo Mortensen, became a surprise hit and the earned the actress heaps of acclaim, leading her to a large role in the hit disaster epic “The Perfect Storm” in 2000 and alongside Keanu Reeves in the charming baseball tale “Hardball”. One of Lane’s greatest successes to date came in 2002 with Adrian Lyne’s “Unfaithful”. As the cheating wife of a clueless Richard Gere, Lane gave a mature, uninhibited performance that earned her numerous critics’ awards in addition to a Best Actress Oscar nomination. Once again a superstar, Lane then headlined the romantic dramas “Under the Tuscan Sun” and “Must Love Dogs” to considerable success.

Lane is currently married to uber-hunk Josh Brolin, and has one child with her first husband, “Highlander” star Christopher Lambert. Her latest film “Hollywoodland” recently premiered to solid reviews at the Venice Film Festival, and later this year she can be seen alongside Thomas Jane in the John Madden-helmed thriller “Killshot”.