Bi Di
Diane Lane, to be precise. She has been photographed with more queer women and queer-playing actresses than what I have displayed here. Kristen Stewart was her castmate in Griffin Dunne’s Fierce People (a 2005 film featuring Donald Sutherland). Years later, Kristin claimed that her favourite erotic movie was Unfaithful (2002). She then went on to say how much she loves Diane. In 2015, Diane starred in a play (The Mystery of Love & Sex) that was written by a British lesbian playwright (Bathsheba Doran). There is a lesbian novelist who appears to have some insider info. Katherine V. Forrest had a 1983 novel called Curious Wine, which is about a relationship between two women - one named Diane while the other is named Lane.
Diane Lane’s first credit as a screen actress was a film that was released in the first quarter of 1979, so there was enough time for herself to build a reputation by the time that it was 1983. As the decades went by, Diane became popular enough for people to cast the following lookalikes: Paige Turco and Sutton Foster. When she was young and blonde, Diane had a slight resemblance to Kathleen Turner. This might be why, after doing three films with Diane, Francis Ford Coppola directed Kathleen in Peggy Sue Got Married (1986). I suspect that Diane wasn’t cast simply because she went on a long hiatus after Coppola completed The Cotton Club in the spring of 1984. When she was working on the film, Diane felt that she could play an older woman. By the time that it was the mid-nineties, Diane started to resemble Jennifer Lopez.
When her marriage to Josh Brolin had fallen apart in February 2013, there were gossip rags raging about how she was in a relationship that was sexless. Online blind items had reiterated that Josh was unfaithful because he was her beard, and that she had a sexual preference for young women. The code word was “fillies” - young female horses. In 2010, Diane was in an equestrian-themed film called Secretariat. In February 2013, there were photos of herself, Laura Dern and Mary Steenburgen having a “girls night out” where they attended the Burbank premiere of Cavalia’s Odysseo - a horse show. Laura Dern is Diane’s best friend. Laura’s mother had a similar name: Diane Ladd. Josh Brolin used to have a lesbian publicist named Kelly Bush Novak. In 2004, Josh was arrested for abusing Diane Lane. Ironically, he didn’t get blacklisted like Mel Gibson - both men could be seen together at Chateau Marmont in December 2012. Mel, in particular, was shaking Jane Fonda’s hand.
In the November 1984 issue of Interview, Diane claimed that she wanted to work with Mel. She said the same thing in the November 1984 issue of an Italian magazine called Moda. Although her divorce to Josh was filed in February 2013, it was finalized in November on what would have been Bruce Lee’s 73rd birthday (Bruce died in 1973). On November 21, 2024, Josh published a memoir where the only wives that he had referenced were the one before Diane and the one afterwards. Back to Jane Fonda, it was mentioned in the March 2016 issue of More that Diane attended dance parties with her and Catherine Keener (who is said to be into women).
Fran Lebowitz looked happier when photographed with another bisexual Diane - a fashion designer by the name of Diane von Furstenberg. About her previous union with Christophe(r) Lambert, Diane Lane said something that reminded me of a complaint that Mimi Rogers had made about her marriage with Tom Cruise. In her interview for the June 2000 issue of Esquire, Diane may have not only reminded people of that other marriage but also of the fact that she was in one of Tom Cruise’s earlier films - Francis Ford Coppola’s The Outsiders (1983).
Diane Lane said: “It wasn’t love and it wasn’t lust, but it was sure something. I used to joke with Christopher, ‘I’m marrying you for all the things that I’m avoiding, not for what I’m getting.’ I was mostly celibate when I was married because he was gone all the time. I felt like the nun in heat waiting for the guy on the stallion to take me off and make a woman of me. I just wanted to belong to somebody and have somebody belong to me in the old-fashioned way. In hindsight, I call myself a rock bleeder; I found the absolutely least likely person on the planet Earth to give me what I needed.”
The issue of celibacy is a head-scratcher. I’m reminded of a songwriter who had a reputation for being asexual - Diane Warren. In 2018, both Dianes were photographed with Diane Keaton. In the mid-eighties, a similar sight gag happened when Diane Lane was photographed separately with Jon Bon Jovi and John Taylor. In the January 1985 issue of Playboy, a reference is made to a photo of Diane and John Taylor in the men’s room that was featured in an issue of Rolling Stone. There was a missed opportunity for a joke about Diane wanting to see John’s Johnson in the John, but maybe it was supposed to be a joke left unsaid so as to make the setting not seem contrived.
In the February 1993 issue of Details, Diane Lane said something that reminded me of Mel Gibson retiring from Hollywood in 1984 to live on a cattle farm in Australia before returning in 1986. It just so happens that Diane had also taken a break in 1984 before coming back in 1986. Like Mel in 1984, Diane had two films that were released to little fanfare. Here is what she told Joe Dolce for Details in 1993: “I wanted to know who I was before presenting myself as hot s#!t. So I took my career off the market and went to Georgia for two years. I lived with my mom, got the chickens’ eggs out of the coop, ate a lot of bacon, and stayed celibate. I didn’t want to play the game – to go to Hollywood parties, memorize who was where and who did what...I don’t have the calculating mind for that. I don’t know if I’m lazy or if I think that’s beneath me.”
In the October 1979 issue of Dolly, Diane Lane stated that she wanted to be as good and famous of an actress as Tatum O’Neal. The latter’s memoir contained memories of being in bed with Melanie Griffith circa 1976. At one point, they had a foursome with a male hairdresser and Maria Schneider in a French hotel. Diane’s first film, A Little Romance (1979), was shot in France. It was the first film produced by Orion Pictures, who distributed the final film that Diane acted in before her hiatus i.e. Francis Ford Coppola’s The Cotton Club (1984). Unlike Streets of Fire (1984), you could hear Diane’s real singing voice in The Cotton Club. In an example of the close Hollywood connections, one of the producers of Streets of Fire had produced Mel Gibson’s comeback movie: Lethal Weapon (1987). This producer was Joel Silver.
In the November 1984 issue of Interview, Diane mentioned that she missed out on the rehearsals of The Cotton Club because she was still working on Streets of Fire. The latter finished filming on August 18, 1983 whereas the former began filming on August 28, 1983. Given the tension that occurred between herself and Coppola, he would have been better advised to recast her role with Jennifer Jason Leigh. I say this because she later showcased her singing ability in Georgia (1995), which won the award for best picture at the Montreal Film Festival. Vincent Spano was not only in Streets of Fire but in an earlier film of Coppola’s that Diane was also in - Rumble Fish (1983). Diane received some counselling from Warren Beatty during the making of Streets of Fire.
In the late seventies, Rosanna Arquette rejected the advances of Warren Beatty. She starred with Vincent Spano in a film called Baby It’s You (1983). In 1988, Rosanna could be seen with Melanie Griffith in the most unexpected places. Back to Diane Lane, she referenced Rosanna when asked to explain how she first met Warren Beatty: “Through a screening he had with Melissa Gilbert and her mother and some other people. We went to see Steven Picaro and Rosanna Arquette at the screening, and Warren was completely taken with Vinnie Spano, an old friend of mine, and so we went to a screening of two Vincent Spano movies at his house. He called me after that and I said I was really uptight about a lot of things, and all this sex counselling stuff.”
Diane Lane met Christoph Lambert during the French publicity tour for The Cotton Club. One of the dancers in Streets of Fire was a French actress named Marine Jahan, who didn’t get credited as the dance double of Jennifer Beals in Flashdance (1983). During the making of The Cotton Club, Jennifer Jason Leigh was replaced with Jennifer Grey. Leigh became a friend of Beals during the making of Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle (1994), which finished principal photography before Pulp Fiction began filming. Both actresses were considered for the latter, but not Diane Lane. It’s ironic, then, that Quentin Tarantino was an executive producer of a film co-starring Diane i.e. the 2005 adaptation of Elmore Leonard’s Killshot that was released in Israel circa 2008 before the U.S. circa 2009.
In the summer of 2002, Jennifer Beals filmed the pilot of a lesbian TV series called The L Word. From September to November of 2002, Diane Lane starred in a film where her character had a lesbian best friend i.e. Sandra Oh co-starred in Under the Tuscan Sun. When Diane co-starred in Sylvester Stallone’s Judge Dredd (1995), she also worked with Joan Chen. In the remake, Dredd (2012), Olivia Thirlby played the hero’s sidekick. This counts as an in-joke because Olivia had dropped out of a lesbian werewolf film called Jack & Diane in 2008. This update on Ginger Snaps (2000) was made in 2010 and released in 2012. Jack & Diane was the title of a John Mellencamp song in 1982, but this was when he was known as John Cougar. Diane Lane is supposed to be a sapphic cougar.
In the first half of 1994, Joan Chen worked with Diane’s ex-husband on The Hunted (1995) i.e. Christoph Lambert. This was before working with Diane on Judge Dredd in the second half of 1994. While The Hunted was filmed in Japan like Jackie Chan’s Thunderbolt (1995), the latter began filming during the making of Judge Dredd. Joan Chen later played a lesbian in Wild Side (1997) and Montréal, My Belle (2025). Diane Lane was interviewed for the June 1997 issue of a magazine called Live. The cover had lesbian country singer K.D. Lang with her face angled and obscured in a way that it looked like Lane had gone butch. Coincidentally, K.D. was the girlfriend of a musical actress in The L Word - Leisha Hailey.
It’s ironic that Meredith Salenger was in the running for the role of Tina Kennard in The L Word because, unlike Diane Lane, Meredith was nascent to the world of on-screen nudity. Meredith was in an ‘80s horror film that had lesbian subtext - The Kiss (1988). Diane rejected the dual roles in A Kiss Before Dying (1991). There is an adult entertainer named Linda Kiss, who resembles Diane. There is a sex tape online that is either a case of mistaken identity or defamation of character in terms of intent. In 2011, Diane’s husband at the time had a kissing scandal. Josh Brolin kissed Javier Bardem on stage at the 83rd Academy Awards.
Televisual audiences didn’t get to see it because the camera cut to a shot of Javier’s wife - Penelope Cruz. This actress had acted with Tom Cruise in Vanilla Sky (2000). Diane Lane had auditioned to be in two films with him - Risky Business (1983) and Jerry Maguire (1996). Josh Brolin had more luck with Javier Bardem because they reunited in the Dune trilogy. Had Diane succeeded with her screen test for Pretty Woman (1990), she would have reunited with Richard Gere sooner i.e. after The Cotton Club and before Unfaithful (2002).
Diane Lane acted with Adrian Pasdar in a film called Vital Signs (1990). Following this, they acted in separate films that were made with Hong Kong film professionals in the Orient. Adrian was in Shanghai 1920 (1991) whereas Diane was in The Setting Sun (1992). As a fan of Hong Kong films, it appeals to me that Yuen Biao was in the latter. I wish that they became “ride or die” friends because Josh Brolin wouldn’t have got the cojones to accost Diane since Biao has tough Triad friends. Sadly, modern media has yet to interview them about working on The Setting Sun. This film features Donald Sutherland, who later worked with Lane on Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All (1994). In The Setting Sun, Diane Lane played a Chinese rebel, which works because she looks like she could be the daughter of Nancy Kwan.
Diane also has a passing resemblance to Natalie Wood - something that was exploited in 1983 by a magazine called The Movies. The September issue had Diane on the cover whereas the October issue had Natalie on the cover. Natalie’s final film, Brainstorm, was released in September. One of Natalie’s friends was Dennis Hopper, who acted in Rumble Fish - the second and final time that Diane worked with Matt Dillon on a Francis Ford Coppola film. Let’s get back to Judge Dredd, Sylvester Stallone is a major fan of Hong Kong action films. He even wanted Jackie Chan to be in Demolition Man (1993), but Jackie turned it down (albeit he still visited Sly on the set). Jackie worked with Yuen Biao many times, and Biao worked with Cynthia Rothrock (who Sly wanted to star with in The Executioner).