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Photographed by BY MARGOT PEGGY ³ DOUGHERTY SIROTA

LANE CHANGER ³ A PRODUCER of the new documentary Half the Sky asked to help expose WHEN the abuse of women in Somaliland, she leapt at the chance. Here, the Oscar-nominated actress talks about what she learned, the newly empty nest she shares with husband Josh Brolin and the difficult childhood that led to her extraordinary career ³³³³³ ³THERE’S A MOMENT in the new American woman. I was grateful to make sympathetic. She may be the PBS documentary Half the Sky that have the scales cleansed from my least vain actress I’ve ever seen.” won’t easily be forgotten. During a eyes about the plight of women in When director Adrian Lyne visit to Somaliland, in eastern Af- the majority of the world.” watched her performance, he was rica, Diane Lane is sitting on a flo- She read Half the Sky (the title “just blown away,” he says, and sub- ral sofa watching a video of a young alludes to a Mao Zedong maxim, sequently cast her in Unfaithful. This girl undergoing the ritual proce- “Women hold up half the sky”) at the time she was stepping out on Rich- dure of female genital mutilation suggestion of her friend Maria Bello ard Gere for carnal afternoons with (FGM). The camera stays on Lane’s and leapt at the chance to join the a rare-book dealer played by Olivier face, sparing viewers details of the project. “I felt dared, and I loved Martinez. Lane earned Oscar and surgery, which is often performed the book,” Lane says. “I’m out of my Golden Globe nominations for her without anesthesia, but the actress’s twenties, I’ve been around a little, riveting portrayal of a woman at once horrified reaction tells us enough. I thought, What am I going to care ashamed and enraptured—and finally The video, which was filmed in about when I’m 80? If I can contrib- devastated—by her unlikely liaison. 1976 to document the barbarism of ute to something that stirs my heart, “She’s a very courageous actor, kind of the procedure, was shot without then it’s all for something.” fearless,” says Lyne. “She’s prepared

sound. Nonetheless, Lane says now, Appearing in a documentary is a to examine what she’s doing and PP “I can still hear [that girl] scream- departure for the actress, who has doesn’t have any ego about it.” HI ENNA

ing. The video was taken around the some 50 TV and feature movies to : J S time I was nine years old, the age her credit, but she has long experi- IL NA . of the child on the table. I thought, ence serving as the viewer’s chap- ROBERT DUVALL considers Lonesome P IO D ROU

Wow, that could be me. The chance erone into the knotty terrain of others’ Dove, the acclaimed 1989 G TU S

LL D of where you’re born, who you’re lives. From her first film, opposite Western miniseries he made A W OR E N born to, your gender and color—it’s Sir Laurence Olivier in 1979’s A Lit- with Lane, one of his favorite projects. S R T TH A

so bizarre to think your fate is deter- tle Romance, through a series of roles Duvall played Gus McCrae, a cattle- A T L mined by such things.” in her teens, including a trio directed man who takes Lane’s prostitute un- A Y E L In the documentary, Lane, 47, and by Francis Ford Coppola (The Outsid- der his wing. “I’ll always think of her UBROFF D AD TI

five other actresses—Eva Mendes, ers, Rumble Fish, The Cotton Club), and as ‘Lorie darlin’,’"” he admits. Although BR PA : EN P

America Ferrera, Meg Ryan, Olivia into the more adult subject matter of A Gus repeatedly asked Lorie for “a U UR E A K

Wilde and Gabrielle Union—each Walk on the Moon and Unfaithful, Lane poke,” Duvall didn’t do the same. “Di- A

travel to a di#erent country in Asia has portrayed an assortment of com- ane was with her French Tarzan hus- L ILOR: MIX. M A E . T or Africa to draw attention to cul- plicated girls, wives and mothers grap- band [Christopher Lambert] at the P R E

tures in which egregious mistreat- pling with the tangled messiness of life. time,” he says, laughing. “So it was ROU G LL

ment of women and girls is endemic. In ’s A Walk on the platonic, with good, warm feelings.” A T CLOUTI W A

The film, which airs in two parts, Moon, she showed us why a woman Despite decades of stardom, Lane E RI E IL T TH

on October 1 and 2, is based on the who loves her husband (Liev Schrei- seems devoted to keeping her own A

best seller by New York Times col- ber) would nonetheless risk a sex- light at a more manageable level. She ANG ZO ZO T COOK T COOK EN

umnist Nicholas Kristof and his wife, ual adventure with an itinerant arrives at Red O, a snazzy Mexican E IR: CK A Sheryl WuDunn, a former journal- salesman (Viggo Mortensen). “If restaurant in West Hollywood, E : B

ist at the paper who now works in someone else had played that part, dressed in white jeans, a rumpled PS RO P

finance. “My role at the minimum it would have been just a sappy man’s-style linen shirt, flat san- . B was to be a witness and an ambas- movie,” says Mortensen. “Diane dals and no perceptible makeup; her G XR

sador,” says Lane. “I’m guilty of was really the engine of that story— only jewelry is a thick, etched wed- PP HI T A the sheltered, privileged life of an and it was a di$cult part to play, to ding band. Jet-lagged after a vacation H AND 97: 94, 95 PAGES

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ELIZABETH AND JAMES feather blazer; saksfifth avenue.com. PANACHE lace bra; nordstrom.com. WOLFORD nylon blend tights; wolfordshop.com. BOTTEGA VENETA pavé diamond ring; bottega veneta.com for stores. PREVIOUS SPREAD: JIMMY CHOO suede san- dals; jimmychoo.com. ³“I’M GRATEFUL that with time I’m accepting my own true heart and the tenderness more. Things don’t last FOREVER, so you take care of them. I learn from WORKING,” says Lane.

in Scotland with her husband, actor recalls as “the biggest goose bump in bare-bones conditions. “Diane’s Josh Brolin, she is still thinking about I’ll ever have. You feel like you’re not a diva,” reports director and Somaliland. “I’m daunted and hum- part of the blessing of life.” Dressed executive producer Maro - bled,” she says, “by the amount of in caftans and headscarves, she rode maye#, who accompanied her. “She’s work there is to do.” with Ismail and Kristof over miles thoughtful, an observer, but she of tracks (so bumpy, “they rattle the didn’t want boundaries. She was fillings right out of your teeth,” she physically warm with people and SEGMENT in Half the Sky says) to remote villages to visit Is- didn’t care about the camera or LANE’S centers on 74-year-old mail’s midwives and check in on worry about how she looked.” Edna Adan Ismail and the pregnant women who needed at- There’s a resilience about Lane hospital she founded in Har- tention. “Edna was training me, be- that’s palpable, a sense that her geisa, the capital of Somali land (orig- cause she can’t help herself,” Lane beauty is something of a feint, an inally northwestern Somalia). At an says with a smile. “She took me by exquisite shield concealing a deter- age when most people retire, Ismail, a the hand, and a woman let me feel mined soul. As she talks, she tosses former first lady of Somalia and an her belly. Now I can tell some things her hair back like a teenager, but her outspoken critic of FGM, sold her about how the baby is positioned and low-register voice is commanding. Mer cedes and her jewelry and raised where the head is. It is something to “She chooses her words with great money around the world to provide see these women. Some are on their care,” says Laura Dern, a friend since a hospital and a midwife- education 12th child. They’ve lost several oth- the two starred as punk rockers in program to support the women of her ers, either in childbirth or later.” She 1981’s Ladies and Gentlemen, The homeland. Somali women and their and Kristof also interviewed “cut- Fabulous Stains. “Diane considers babies have among the highest mor- ters,” the women who make a liv- what she’s expressing and takes in- tality rates in the world. Delivering, ing performing FGM in the villages. credible personal responsibility.” not to mention conceiving, a child “We were talking about some delicate Onscreen she dares us to accept her when the tissue surrounding the va- issues,” says Kristof. “Diane was fine characters at face value: In Unfaith- gina has been radi cally excised and crouching in somebody’s hut and ful and A Walk on the Moon, she’s sewn shut is fraught with complica- making her feel at ease.” the picture of propriety while se- tion. “How would you have a baby “The majority of Edna’s country- cretly immersed in torrid a#airs. As around a chastity belt?” asks Lane. It men and -women are nomads with Pat Loud in Cinema Verite—the HBO was Ismail, Somalia’s first British- camels out looking for water so they movie based on the 1973 PBS series trained nurse and midwife, who re- can grow something to feed their An American Family—she’s an a%u- corded the FGM video and, decades goats and have milk,” Lane says. ent Santa Barbara mom with enig- later, showed it to Lane. “The women weave their houses out matic motives. “Diane’s elegant,” says “When we knew that a Hollywood of fibers. They roll them up and put James Gandolfini, who costarred. star would be coming for the docu- them on their camels, and they go.” “She’s beautiful and refined and a mentary, many of us, including me, Half the Sky executive producer smart, smart lady.” But check her out were expecting the stereotype: an Jamie Gordon initially approached hammering on the storm shutters at artificial, self-centered and frag- Lane partly because she knew of the beach house in Nights in Rodanthe. ile person,” Ismail says. “Instead, I her involvement with Heifer Inter- The woman is profoundly capable. found a warm, intelligent and natu- national, a charity that donates live- “I have learned a lot from my char- rally beautiful woman who was gen- stock to the desperately poor. “Four acters,” says Lane. “They’ve made uinely concerned about the poverty years ago,” Lane says, “I went on- me more accepting of my own . . . the and ill health of the people she met.” line and signed up with my [teen- dreaded word: vulnerabilities. You At the Edna Adan Maternity Hos- age] daughter to go on one of their must be vulnerable emotionally for pital, Lane donned hand-me-down trips, to Rwanda. No camera crews, the audience to care and feel for you. scrubs (most of the equipment and no celebrity do-gooder thing. We just I’m much more the tough cookie. uniforms are donated) and attended wanted to witness their work.” When I was younger, I didn’t want to the birth of a baby girl. She cut the The experience primed her for explore that. I was more interested cord and delivered the bundled new- the Half the Sky project, for which in protecting myself. I’m grateful born to her father, an experience she Lane spent 10 days in Somaliland, that with time I’m accepting my own

98 more.com | september 2012 true heart and the tenderness more. dad. “You’d have made me an actress prior marriage, whom Diane first Things don’t last forever, so you take if I had two heads!” she recalls shout- met in her twenties. “We didn’t have care of them. I learn from working.” ing when she was 12, before throwing that much in common to continue She’s been at it for a long time. a chair to drive the point home. forward,” she says. “But we did strip Her father, Burt Lane, was an act- Because of rehearsals and per- away the mystery.”)

ing coach and sometime cabdriver formances, “I was missing out on ³ for whom the craft of acting was, a lot, sports and friend stu#,” she she says, a religion. At age six, she says. “Normal childhood looked like BY NECESSITY, Lane was a performed with New York’s experi- a candy store and Christmas to me.” self-reliant child. Dern re- mental theater company La MaMa, It got further out of reach when, at ³ members going to stay with playing a role in Euripides’s Medea 14, Lane landed on the cover of Time her friend at the Hilton in Los An- (she learned her Greek lines phoneti- for a story about child stars that in- geles when she was making 1984’s cally); later on, she toured in other cluded Tatum O’Neal and Brooke Streets of Fire, “just to make it feel ancient tragedies. “I got killed in ev- Shields. “I was so happy to see other a little homier.” One of the founda- ery play,” she wryly notes. But she specimens,” Lane says. “It was such tions of their friendship, Dern says, saw the world, performing in the ru- a rarity. I don’t think young people was that both young women were in- ins of Athens, Persepolis and Baal- today remember there was a time trigued by the idea of “being seekers. bek, and traveling to Italy, Germany, when 14-year-olds didn’t control the We didn’t necessarily know what we France, Scotland and Finland. entertainment industry.” were longing for, but we were inter- When A Little Romance began Burt Lane, who died in 2002, was ested in the idea of an internal search, filming in Paris, Lane was 13 and determined that his daughter be able a sense of self or connection to some- had already been to the city five to take care of herself. “He would thing larger. Trying to become a times: “I’d performed at the Théâtre say, ‘I did not raise you for bondage,’ ” grownup in a healthy way was, oddly, des Bou#es du Nord. I knew La Ro- she remembers. “He would elucidate a deep interest for both of us, even chelle and areas of France. People this whole scenario: A guy is going at 12 and 15.” By 19, when Lane was thought that was precocious. I real- to chain you to a chair, have his way starring in The Cotton Club, her first ized I shouldn’t talk about it.” with you until you’re pregnant with of three movies with Gere and the ³

VISITING SOMALILAND MATERNITY PROGRAMS WITH FOUNDER EDNA ISMAIL (WITH LANE, FAR LEFT), THE ACTRESS RECEIVED SOME RUDIMENTARY TRAINING AS A MIDWIFE. AT THE CLINIC IN BALIGUBADLE, LANE MET WITH LOCAL STUDENTS.

At school in the U.S., her acting was his child and you have to have it, and third of four she made with Coppola, “very much a stigma,” she says. “Isn’t that will be your life. It was a really she had a moment of realization. “I ANG

CH that weird? But kids can be mean toxic cartoon.” In hindsight, though, said, ‘OK, I am now wiser than my fa- A with whatever you o#er them.” Her she says she understands her father’s ther in every aspect of filmmaking.’ I

TOF, MIR TOF, parents had split when she was a concern about the potential traps outgrew his ability to give me advice. S newborn, and when Lane wasn’t liv- of being female. “That is women’s He agreed.” Coppola says he remem- KRI

AS ing with her father in a series of Man- plight historically and today in many bers Lane at that time as a “sweet and

ICHOL hattan residential hotels, she was in parts of the world, because women very hardworking young lady. From N

FT: FT: the South with her mother, Colleen don’t have any say over their bodies. the moment I worked with her, I had E Farrington, a former nightclub singer [My dad] couldn’t believe that would a crush on her—as did many who saw and Playboy centerfold from Georgia. be the fate of his only flesh and blood those pictures.” , FROM L S Lane’s ambivalence about her career daughter, his only child.” (Actually, Burt Lane moved on to the role of HOTO

P fueled a rocky relationship with her Burt had another daughter, from a cheerleader, continued on page 165

september 2012 | more.com 99 Lawyer from page 137 Diane Lane from page 99

Mountain Innocence Center, she was but his fears may have colored ready to return to the grueling, poorly Lane’s idea of having children. “I paid and often frustrating cause that thought, If I have a child, I’ll be fo- she now realized was her life’s work. cused on the one and won’t be able to do great things,” she says. “In fact, it’s the opposite: Because of having had a child, I have gone past my BACK IN HER Salt Lake City bun- comfort zone and been willing to galow, curled on the couch sipping put myself out there.” green tea, Monroe is on a roll. She’s When Lane married Brolin in 2004, helping a group of exonerated prison- they united their children—her daugh- ers stage a rock concert for an upcom- ter and his son and daughter—in a ing Rocky Mountain Innocence Center blended family. Barbra Streisand, who benefit, and she’s jetting around the is married to Josh’s father, actor James West, talking to police and prosecu- Brolin, is an active grandmother. tor groups about avoiding the errors “What I enjoy most about Barbra is that land the wrong people in prison. how participatory she is in the fam- “No one wants to make these mis- ily,” Lane says. “She’s a mensch. She takes,” she says. But fighting for in- comes to the kids’ plays and gradua- nocent prisoners is a race against time, tions. It was never an issue or question. and Monroe often feels she’s falling She wants that involvement.” behind. “Look, all too often someone’s Last year Lane and Brolin faced an being wrongfully convicted, right?” instant empty-nest scenario: Within Monroe says. “There’s no question two weeks, all three kids moved out, that these convictions are preventable, two of them to New York and one if we could just get out on the front to Asia. “I can still hear the sound end and improve the way that law en- of Velcro ripping, the tearing-away forcement does its business. But get- feeling,” Lane says. “Wait! Where are ting that work done!” Monroe throws you going? Was it something I said?” up her hands, then stops and laughs at Being without them “is kind of chill- her own intensity. ing,” she adds, “but I like straight- The new job she’s just taken may forward showdowns with fate. I’m make her work easier: This fall Mon- feeling good about it.” roe will start working for the national Until now, much of Lane’s char- Innocence Project, expanding its out- ity work has been done quietly, but reach to victims’ organizations, police this fall, with the airing of Half the groups and prosecutor organizations Sky, she seems poised to ramp up in D.C. “It’s a great fit for me,” Monroe the public aspect. In September says. For her, the move means going she’ll host an L.A. fund raiser for home—and that feels right. She looks Heifer International. “It’s the most up and smiles: Asher, 14, has come in rewarding thing to do with my time wearing a T-shirt that says &'&()*& now,” she says. A few days later she +),*-(&, ./* 0&/01&. They need to opens in a production of Tennessee get on their way; The Tempest is be- Williams’s Sweet Bird of Youth at the ing staged at the university playhouse, Goodman Theatre in Chicago, and and Monroe, once again, is running next year will appear as Superman’s late. But Asher doesn’t mind a quick mother in the movie Man of Steel. interrogation. “I don’t see her as a She’s also contemplating a theater kick-ass mobilizer person,” he says. project in New York. “Hey! Some “I just see her as my mom.” He gives people I love are in New York!” she her a hug and a sweet, braces-filled says brightly, imagining a reunion smile. “But if I were thrown in jail, I with the departed children. “I can would definitely call her. Because I be, like, nearby . . . I’d be out of their know she’d get me out.” hair, but available!”

ALEXIS JETTER’s last story for More was MARGOT DOUGHERTY profiled Made- “Get Angry. Go Viral. Change Everything!” leine Stowe in the June issue of More.

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