Women & Sex

Diane Lane Photo Gallery

For years Hollywood's most confirmed bachelorette, Diane Lane is finally settling in to married life. But domesticity hasn't fully tamed the sex kitten within.

By: Rebecca Ascher-Walsh, Photographs by: Richard Phibbs
[ Updated: Jul 14, 2008 - 5:07:49 PM ]

Take heart, ye who suffer knowing Diane Lane will never be yours: She gives bad date.

"My husband almost walked out of one of our first dinners because I couldn't stop laughing," she says, her husky voice laced with the promise of whisky and fun even at 9 a.m. "I had the nervous giggles, the endorphin heat rush when you just can't stop, and it got worse and worse. Luckily, I managed not to lose him," she says of actor Josh Brolin, her spouse of 2 years. "But that attraction, it's like you've set off a three-alarm fire. When you get older," she continues, "you just try to control it better. But it's almost impossible to hide."

Lane is a woman who hides little of herself, body or soul. She made her film debut at the age of 13, in A Little Romance opposite Sir Laurence Olivier, and worked steadily for the next three decades, a go-to patrician pretty girl. But then, in 2002's Unfaithful, a raw drama starring Olivier Martinez as the lusty lover and Richard Gere as the wronged husband, Lane proved she could smolder. Unfaithful snagged Lane an Oscar nomination and reminded audiences of the power of experienced seduction.

No magazine spread of a pneumatic Pamela Anderson can conjure up the simultaneous sensations of longing and satiation as Lane does fully clothed, pressed up against the wall by Martinez. Lane bears witness to the dual urges of sexuality and self-destructiveness that would be lost on a 20-year-old.

Now, at a time when most of her colleagues are assiduously checking their IRA balances, the 41-year-old is in high demand. Lane's latest project has her playing a woman in her 50s who financially supports her younger lover in Hollywoodland, the biopic of the original Superman, George Reeves (played by Ben Affleck). In a culture that rewards youth, donning a gray wig and aging makeup is a brave move.

"Playing 10 years older was such a relief, like that iced tea commercial from the '70s where the guy falls back into the pool," she says. "Instead of fighting aging, you give in. Instead of trying to stay dry, I'm going to jump in the water. Besides," she says, "when I see myself onscreen, I already think I've become my mother." (It's worth mentioning that Lane's mother, singer Colleen Farrington, now 69, is a former Playboy centerfold.)

Lane herself is lithe yet busty, dressed in a pair of slim-fitting pants and a white blouse. Her hair in a ponytail, she's as kittenish as any pop star. She hasn't slept the night before (she blames it on the full moon), and she's feeling shaky being back in the city where she was raised by her father, acting coach Burt Lane, who died 3 years ago. "I can't even come to New York without being overwhelmed," she says. "I can't enter Manhattan without crying. It's so surprising; I'm still such a daddy's girl."