À ³ Photographed by BY MARGOT PEGGY ³ DOUGHERTY SIROTA LANE CHANGER ³ A PRODUCER of the new documentary Half the Sky asked DIANE LANE 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 Tony Goldwyn’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 96 more.com | september 2012 ³ 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 Cher- 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.