Diane Lane

Diane Lane (born January 22, 1965) is an American actress. Her accolades include nominations for an Academy Award, three Primetime Emmy Awards, and three Golden Globe Awards.

Lane made her film debut in George Roy Hill's 1979 film A Little Romance. She had already been professionally acting on stage since the age of six. Later, she acted in the movies Streets of Fire (1984) and The Cotton Club (1984). Lane returned to acting to appear in The Big Town, Lady Beware (both 1987) and the Western miniseries Lonesome Dove (1989), for which she was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie. Lane earned further recognition for her role in A Walk on the Moon (1999), for which she was nominated for the Independent Spirit Award for Best Female Lead. This was followed by several film roles of varying degrees of success, such as My Dog Skip, The Perfect Storm (both 2000), The Glass House, and Hardball (both 2001).

Lane received critical acclaim for her performance as an adulterous wife in the erotic thriller Unfaithful (2002), which earned her a nomination for Academy Award for Best Actress. She acted in the romantic comedy-drama Under the Tuscan Sun (2003), which earned her a second Golden Globe Award nomination. For much of the rest of the decade, she alternately appeared in romances such as Must Love Dogs (2005) and Nights in Rodanthe (2008), and thrillers such as Fierce People (2005), Hollywoodland (2006), and Untraceable (2008).

She has appeared in four films directed by Francis Ford Coppola: The Outsiders, Rumble Fish (both 1983), The Cotton Club (1984), and Jack (1996), and appeared in one film directed by his wife Eleanor Coppola: Paris Can Wait (2016). Lane had a recurring role as Martha Kent, the adoptive mother of Superman, in Man of Steel (2013), and subsequent films of the DC Extended Universe.

Lane's later roles have included leads in the thriller Let Him Go (2020), the Ryan Murphy series Feud: Capote vs. The Swans (for which she won a further Primetime Emmy nomination), the Scott Z. Burns anthology series Extrapolations for Apple TV+, the animated Pixar sequel Inside Out 2, the Netflix series A Man in Full, and most recently, the thriller film Anniversary which is set to be released in 2025.

Lane was born on January 22, 1965, in New York City. Her mother, Colleen Leigh Farrington, was a nightclub 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 separated. Lane's mother went to Mexico and obtained a divorce, while retaining custody of Lane until she was six years old. Lane's father received custody of her after Lane's mother moved to Georgia. Lane and her father lived in a number of residential hotels in New York City and she rode with him in his taxi.

When Lane was 15, she declared her independence from her father and flew to Los Angeles for a week with actor and friend Christopher Atkins, with whom she starred in the 1981 film Child Bride of Short Creek. Lane later remarked, "It was reckless behavior that comes from having too much independence too young." She returned to New York and moved in with a friend's family, paying them rent. In 1981, she enrolled in high school after taking correspondence courses. However, Lane's mother kidnapped her and took her 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 the next three years, but they eventually reconciled.

Lane's grandmother, Eleanor Scott, was a Pentecostal preacher of the Apostolic denomination, and Lane was influenced theatrically by the demonstrative quality of her grandmother's sermons. Lane began acting professionally at the age of six at the La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club in New York, where she appeared in a production of Medea. When Lane was 12 years old, she had a role in Joseph Papp's production of The Cherry Orchard with Meryl Streep and Irene Worth. At this time, Lane was enrolled in an accelerated program at Hunter College High School; however, her grades suffered from her busy schedule. When Lane was 13, she turned down a role in Runaways on Broadway to make her feature-film debut opposite Laurence Olivier in A Little Romance. Lane won high praise from Olivier, who declared her "the new Grace Kelly". At the same time, Lane was featured on the cover of Time, which declared her one of Hollywood's "Whiz Kids".