'Sun' Shines On Actress Diane Lane
In her new film, actress Diane Lane plays a divorced woman who buys a house in Tuscany, Italy, hoping to start a new life "Under The Tuscan Sun."
It's a far cry from Lane's last big-screen role in "Unfaithful," for which she earned an Oscar nomination, portraying a woman whose life spins out of control after she begins an adulterous affair.
This time around, her character is newly divorced San Francisco writer Frances Mayes, who discovers bonds that are a little less destructive. To rejuvenate her zest for life, Frances takes a 10-day trip to Tuscany. But soon, her short trip is extended when she buys a run-down villa named Bramasole — literally, "something that yearns for the sun."
Slowly Frances rediscovers the pleasures of laughter, friendship and romance.
Lane tells The Early Show co-anchor Harry Smith the film is a wonderful metaphor for faith.
"Of literally building a foundation for your dreams even if they're not coming true right now, building for them," she says. "And what is that Shakespeare quote? 'The readiness is all' and if you can be ready for something, it's more likely to find you."
As Frances, Lane goes through a wide rage of emotions, and she says this was fun to play.
"We all have - even in the course of a day, sometimes - highs and lows and everything in between and we get to meet my character through how she reacts and deals with other people," Lane explains.
Her character starts with a shattered life and, Lane says, it's "a slice of life in that way where we see the awkwardness of finding your legs again, when you've completely lost your foot."
Lane says she was interested in portraying Frances from the moment she read the screenplay, but it was her dinner with the movie's writer/director Audrey Wells that convinced the actress she could not walk away from the movie.
She says, "I'm trying to be guided by my inner voice of wanting to play a character rather than, you know, how it reads in the trades as a moment."
"Under The Tuscan Sun" debuted to a second-place weekend opening with an impressive $9.41 million in 1,226 theaters.
Before her work in "Under The Tuscan Sun" and "Unfaithful," Lane was seen in movies such as "The Perfect Storm" and "A Walk on the Moon."
She has also starred in "Hardball," the adaptation of Willie Morris' childhood memoir, "My Dog Skip," the independent drama "The Only Thrill," "Murder at 1600," Francis Ford Coppola's "Jack," "Wild Bill," "The Outsiders," "Rumble Fish," "The Cotton Club," "My New Gun," and "Chaplin."
On television, Lane was last seen starring opposite Bill Pullman in TNT's "The Virginian." Also directed by Pullman, the film is based on Owen Wister's classic western novel of the same name.
Lane's previous television work includes "A Streetcar Named Desire" for CBS television, as well as the award-winning CBS series "Lonesome Dove," for which she was nominated Outstanding Lead Actress for her role. Lane also starred opposite Gena Rowlands in the Hallmark Hall of Fame drama, "Grace & Glorie" for CBS.
In 1994, Lane starred opposite Donald Sutherland, Cicely Tyson and Anne Bancroft in the CBS miniseries, "The Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All."
About her career and this 30-year overnight sensation, Lane says, "I feel like an anomaly. I feel like the Wrights brothers' experiment; it is like are we going to have flight at this late time? Because there I was, doing interviews for promotions of other projects of things and this question would always come up. Are you ever going to achieve more?"
It is like the question is when are you going to be a star? Lane says, "Fame and all of that stuff. It scared me. Not that I have feared success, but that celebrity itself can be this machine that feeds on itself and gets out of control and, suddenly, you're serving something that you didn't even intend to build. So it's a mixed - it's a tightrope walk."