Diane Lane has been riding the crest of a career upswing since last years A Walk on the Moon. Her leading role in Wolfgang Petersen's hotly anticipated The Perfect Storm could be one more step on the way to becoming the star she's deserved to be for more than two decades.
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The Santa Monica coffeehouse where Diane Lane and I meet is fresh out of her chosen elixir, the Tension Tamer, but no matter, Lane's plenty mellow without it. With over two decades of Hollywood experience notched on her belt, it would take a lot to get her rattled anyway.
Lane made a luminous film debut at age 14 in A Little Romance and went on to star as a teen in three Francis Ford Coppola movies-- The Outsiders, Rumble Fish and The Cotton Club. She was easily the most beautiful girl of the era and the most gifted, too. But in 1984, when she was 19, she fled Hollywood and didn't resurface for several years. It took a while for her to reestablish herself (and it could be argued that she's rarely gotten the roles she's deserved), but in 1987 she was rewarded with an Emmy nomination for her performance in the miniseries Lonesome Dove. Since then, her career has suffered more than its share of missed opportunities and missteps--1995's Judge Dredd would be one of the latter--but at 35, with & six-year-old daughter, Eleanor (by ex-husband Christopher Lambert), and a good deal of professional respect, she's a true Hollywood survivor. And right now she's on a roll. It started a year ago with A Walk on the Moon, in which she turned in some career-peak work as a '60s housewife whose soul is revitalized when she has an affair with sexy clothing salesman Viggo Mortensen. The family drama she starred in earlier this year, My Dog Skip, was a tear-jerking gem, and she was heartbreakingly beautiful and persuasive in TNT's The Virginian. This summer, Lane stars in The Perfect Storm, director Wolfgang Petersen's much-anticipated adaptation of the best-selling true story of a group of fishermen caught in one of the century's worst storms.
DENNIS HENSLEY: First off, I hope you're happy. I just saw My Dog Skip and I sobbed like a baby.
DIANE LANE: I know, if you have anything loose that needs to come out, it's gonna come out at that movie.
Q: Yet the kids in the theater seemed OK.
A: They haven't been broken in yet by life.
Q: What appealed to you about that film?
A: The simplicity of the genre. It hearkened back to a purer era; not just the story, but how it was handled. No merchandising, no sequels.
Q: In one of the big summer films coming up, The Perfect Storm, you play the girlfriend of one of the men on a doomed fishing boat. Ever been in a scary storm yourself?
A: Yes. I was 15 and I was with the neighbor boys, who were 17 and 18. I thought they knew so much, right? So I said, "Sure, I'll get on a catamaran with you guys." So we go sailing and out of absolutely nowhere, this black cloud comes and the water completely changes, like a schizophrenic. It went from being a beautiful dream to a horrific nightmare. And we were idiots--we didn't have any survival gear, we didn't even have a compass. I mean, stupid! We made it back, but the lightning bolts were coming out of the sky and we were like a lightning rod out there. I jumped off the boat the minute I saw land and swam. And I never set foot on a catamaran again.
Q: Mark Wahlberg plays your boyfriend in the movie. How was the chemistry between you two?
A: I adore him. He's like a warm puppy and I get an endorphin rush just thinking about working with him. What you see is what you get with him. He doesn't struggle with the issues of having a persona in this Industry, and it's such a relief. Basically, I think if he were here right now, we'd just start making out, because that's really all we did. We just made out all the time. [Laughs]
Q: You mean you didn't wait for the director to yell "Action!"?
A: By the time he said "Quiet on the set!" we were already in a French lip lock.
Q: The Perfect Storm is a true story--did you meet the woman you play in the film, Christina Cotter?
A: Yeah, but unfortunately, we shot in L.A. first. I think if I were as professional a person as those I admire, I'd have gotten my ass on a plane independent of the production and met Chris, but I was secretly terrified that it would throw me off of my own conception of the character in the film. When I did meet her, I felt like, "I could've had a V-8."
Q: How far into filming were you?
A: Too far to make any adjustments. But she was completely cool. Some of the family members are in one of the scenes in the movie. Chris is in the background and there I am, playing her. It was very touching.
Q: What was she like?
A: I feel like she's a bit of an underdog. There was a current of hostility toward her. There were so many people in Gloucester, Massachusetts, who knew these men, but when the author of The Perfect Storm, Sebastian Junger, came and started asking people what had gone on, nobody would talk. Chris talked to him because she was relieved to have somebody know her part in what occurred. Now a lot of people resent her version of the story and wish that they'd spoken up too.
Q: Some serious drinking goes on in the book. Did you consider approaching the drunk scenes by getting hammered first?
A: No, I've been around people who've made that choice and it was lethal. I remember having a lot of fun playing smashed in The Cotton Club--people were like, "Gee, you were really gone in that scene." I guess between the people I've known and the family I have and my own experiences, it's sort of a piecing together of the Greatest Hits of drunks I've known and drunks I've been.
Q: What's the most trouble you've gotten into while drinking?
A: I'd have to say throwing up. Isn't that enough?
Q: Notorious prankster George Clooney is also in the film. Did he ever pull any fast ones on you?
A: No, because I didn't really get enough time with George for him to realize I'm OK to pull a fast one on.
Q: You're single now, right?
A: Yeah.
Q: What's your take on dating?
A: I'm utterly mystified, that's my take. [Laughs] I enjoy not being beholden to anybody. I enjoy the flow of my own energy without being in a union with somebody where you have to compromise what you want to do with your time. I'm very happy to be sort of feeding myself right now. That way, I can eat what I want, you know? I'm reading books, going to movies... right now I'm sort of dating myself. [Laughs]
Q: Do you want to get married again?
A: I can't fathom why I would, and I say char without bitterness. I'd have to fall so chemically, intoxicatingly, trustingly, hormonally in love that I needed the promise of that bond. That's what you marry for.
Q: You're doing the psychological thriller The Glass House-with Leelee Sobieski. You haven't done many thrillers before, have you?
A: I've avoided them brilliantly for years because I usually find that they require too much suspended disbelief for me to sit in a theater. The only one I ever did was far from the proudest moment of my career, and I really only did it because I wanted to see my husband, and the only way to do that was to work with him. But this ones good. It's a dark, macabre nightmare. I inherit Leelee after her parents get killed...
Q: ... and then all hell breaks loose.
A: Yeah, but slowly. Slowly.
Q: Were you a good girl as a teenager or a hellion?
A: I was rebellious, but I also knew not to push it too far. I was bad enough to get away with it and not bad enough to hurt myself or anyone else.
Q: What movie gave you the creeps when you were a kid?
A: A Clockwork Orange. I was just shocked to bits. I think it was the rape scenes that did it to me. I was nine years old, way too young.
Q: Did your parents take you to see it?
A: No. From about age six to 13, I was in a traveling theater company. We were in Denmark doing a play when I saw that movie.
Q: What kind of plays would you do?
A: Greek tragedies like Medea. I died in every play I did. I'd get stabbed or thrown off a cliff or strangled. It was great.
Q: Since your parents weren't around, who took care of you?
A: Well, I would just ask if I could be with a certain person each day, like, "Can I be with you today?" I had my idols in the company.
Q: Was it ever scary not being with your family?
A: No. There was very much a family feeling to the group. It felt like I'd joined the circus. It was fun.
Q: How did that experience shape you as an adult?
A: It made me wish I'd been older during the sexual revolution! [Laughs]
Q: Were there all sorts of shenanigans going on?
A: Absolutely, but I was completely unaware of it. My innocence remained intact, emotionally and otherwise.
Q: What sight or smell takes you back to that time?
A: Candle wax. We performed in really interesting, unusual, historical venues like Greek ruins or on beaches, usually with torches and candles.
Q: What's the worst thing that ever went wrong for you onstage?
A: I think peeing while playing dead was pretty bad.
Q: Did working as a kid seem unusual to you?
A: I took it for granted that this was a normal expenditure of energy. We only toured in summers. The rest of the year I went to PS 59. I'd do school, then rehearsal, go home and do homework, then get up and go to school again, and this went on and on and on. Finally, when I got into high school, I'd go into the wheelchair stall in the bathroom and pass out on the cold tile right when I got to school. I wouldn't even go to class.
Q: Did you finally just crash and burn and quit?
A: Well, I wanted to quit and get a Ph.D. in something and prove to everybody I was really smart, but they offered me A Little Romance and I just thought, "What idiot could possibly turn down Laurence Olivier and Venice?"
Q: A Little Romance was your film debut. When you got that part, were you nervous about it or did you think you were pretty hot stuff?
A: I was just so flabbergasted, because auditioning was so ho-hum, but suddenly I'd lucked into a film. It's like, you don't think you're going to get pregnant from sex until you do. And then it's like, "Oh my God, it's true!"
Q: What's your favorite memory of Laurence Olivier?
A: His telling off-color jokes about the Royal Family.
Q: Did you have a crush on the boy who played opposite you, Thelonious Bernard?
A: Yeah, I had a thing for him but we got along terribly. We were coming into puberty and I thought it'd be fun to flirt and he'd say things back to me in French like, "Shut your face, bitch!" Later, we had to do that scene where we kiss on the bridge, but by then he was just my friend and I was like, "Too little, too late."
Q: Did you get along well with Matt Dillon, with whom you've made three movies? There was an item in People years ago that said you didn't like him.
A: People just love to take us back to 16-year-old misquoted, bitchy moments. I adore Matt. I feel about him as though he were a brother. It was a very unusual relationship back then. We didn't talk unless the cameras were rolling. There were definitely sparks, but we saved it for the cameras.
Q: You left Hollywood for a while after doing The Cotton Club. Why?
A: I felt an earthquake and I freaked out. I got a U-Haul and put everything in it and drove home to Georgia. I didn't like any of the things that were being offered to me and I was exhausted. I'd been working since I was six without time to reflect and be hungry for the meal.
Q: Were you back in L.A. for the Northridge quake in '94?
A: Oh yeah. My daughter was a baby and all my frozen breast milk went bad. That's my earthquake story. I was so pissed off. Of course, I took it personally. God was just toying with me.
Q: What work are you most proud of?
A: I guess A Walk on the Moon, because I was afforded a role that had a lot going on in the writing, I'm always proud when I feel I've gotten as far emotionally as the moment deserved, because sometimes you're not able to.
Q: Anna Paquin played your rebellious teenage daughter in that film. When you were doing the scenes where you two would argue, did you think, "Oh God, this is going to be me and my real daughter in a few years"?
A: Absolutely. I here was no way I could avoid the tinge of panic that this might be foreshadowing. But at the same time, it's a rite of passage. You must go through the rejection of your parents to own yourself even if it's just, 'You love me too much. Go away!" It's like death and taxes.
Q: Did your priorities about your career change when you had your daughter?
A: It definitely made my heart tome alive and it made me a lot more confident about my own capabilities. Once you've pushed a baby out of your body, you're a hero forever to yourself. And every day being a parent is so filled with challenge and reward, it forces you to grow as a person.
Q: Does it ever seem like directors don't consider you for projects that you'd be perfect for because they want the hot young thing who just wandered into town yesterday?
A: Popular culture has always been youth-driven. From the boy kings who ran empires thousands of years ago to now, there's always been that element. I don't sit around and compare myself to somebody who's been around for five years no matter how much money they command. Ideally, I'm searching for risk, keeping the stakes high, keeping things juicy. A lot of times you're not allowed to experiment because people have a set expectation that you're supposed to fulfill, and if you don't, they resent it.
Q: What's the most bullshit thing a Hollywood-suit type has ever said to you?
A: "Hello, nice to meet you.' After I'd shot a movie for them!
Q: They didn't remember you?
A: It was five years later. They're in the business of making money and I guess the movie didn't make money for them, so therefore I was a nonentity. That once happened with my agent, too. He was also representing Christopher before we got married and Christopher said, "Wouldn't it be fun for all of us to have lunch?" So we meet, sit down and this guy turns to Christopher and says, "Who's this lovely, charming girlfriend?" He was my agent!
Q: What did you say?
A: "Buh-bye!"
Q: What did you say in the moment, though?
A: When a social faux pas of that magnitude happens, you really just speed-bump over it and smile politely and go on with the day as quickly as possible. That's the way it goes. But the minute you've got something they want...
Q: Has there ever been a time when you wished you were a bigger star?
A: Well, I am very blessed that I can have my life and eat it too. It's the perfect livable balance. I'd rather be working than be hot. I don't envy the depth that comes after the height. So I feel a sense of relief that I'm still here, 20 years later.
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Dennis Hensley interviewed Lochlyn Munro for the April issue of Movieline.