HER ITALIAN JOB DIANE LANE'S REAL-LIFE LONGING HELPS HER GET INTO CHARACTER FOR 'UNDER THE TUSCAN SUN'.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Writer

Diane Lane is enjoying a run of good fortune that, considering how well loved she is by audiences and co-workers alike, seems mighty long in coming.

With her first Academy Award nomination (for last year's ``Unfaithful'') following on the heels of her first blockbuster movie appearance (``The Perfect Storm'') and widely praised turns in the smaller productions ``A Walk on the Moon'' and ``My Dog Skip,'' the 38-year-old actress is now the sole star of a big Hollywood production, ``Under the Tuscan Sun.''

All this has come during a period of immense personal fulfillment as well. Lane, who has a 10-year-old daughter with her ex-husband, French actor Christopher Lambert, is happily planning a second marriage to actor Josh Brolin.

But even the best of times cannot be perfect. Burt Lane, her acting coach father who helped guide the New York actress's career since her stage debut at the age of 6, died earlier this year.

Lane, whose favorite word seems to be ``flexibility,'' and whose infectious optimism has gotten her through decades of professional uncertainty, says she feels her father's love these days as strongly as she ever has.

``Remember when Obi-Wan Kenobi says to Darth Vader, 'If you kill me, I'll become bigger than you can possibly imagine'?'' Lane says, laughing and smiling. ``That's my dad. He's completely taken control like that right now, making sure that I have a nice, bump-free ride for a chunk of time. I'm kidding, but I actually give him some credit - I'm sure that he's having some say in the matter. It's adorable.''

Actually Lane - a joke-cracking mixture of erudition and earthiness, highly skilled talent and hard-working pragmatism - has earned much of her current satisfaction on her own. Raoul Bova, the Italian actor who plays Lane's love interest in ``Tuscan Sun,'' pretty well sums up the general take on the actress - in revealingly heartfelt, imperfect English, of course.

``I was such an admirer of Diane, since 1984 when I saw her in 'Cotton Club,' '' Bova confesses. ``When I got this part and knew that Diane was playing this role, well ... I cannot use the word! I was just saying, 'Oh my God! Diane Lane, my favorite actress, a great actress and sexy actress, everything.' I was so happy.

``But Diane is also a great person, a great mother and a great professional. I remember we were working one afternoon and the sun was going away. She said, 'Raoul, let's move the lights and help the crew because we have to get this scene.' That's very impressive, because you never expect something like that from a big American star.''

But you do expect a star turn, which ``Tuscan'' screenwriter-director Audrey Wells knew she absolutely had to have. The film is very loosely based on Frances Mayes' best-selling nonfiction book about adventures in real estate in the most beautiful region of Italy. Wells' screen story adds to Lane's character a failed marriage, numerous subsidiary relationships and several extra acres of personal growth to cope with while trying to make her impulse buy, a rundown hilltop villa.

``I knew that, with Diane in the lead role, she would have enough weight, enough inner life and inner pain that she would carry into every scene, that it would permit me to make a movie that was superficially lighter and more comedic,'' says Wells, whose only previous directing effort was the small independent production ``Guinevere.'' ``It would never lose touch with its center because Diane was in the role.''

Appreciated, if not exactly A-list established, for her emotionally precise performances in films ranging from the puppy-love classic ``A Little Romance'' (her movie debut, made when she was 13) to ``Cattle Annie and Little Britches,'' ``The Outsiders,'' ``Rumble Fish,'' ``Streets of Fire,'' the ``Lonesome Dove'' TV miniseries, ``My New Gun,'' ``Chaplin'' and as Stella in a TV ``Streetcar Named Desire,'' among many others, Lane brought another special quality to the film's Tuscany location.

She was as miserably lonely as her screen version of Mayes.

``It was very challenging for me to be away from home for three months,'' says Lane, who shot the film in various picturesque locales on the Italian peninsula last fall. ``That's a long time to be away from your child who was starting fourth grade. And there were times when I was so beside myself, being in love to the extreme that I am and was, in the most romantic place in the world, I was, like, chewing the furniture.

``I was up until 2 in the morning on the Internet, trying to type e-mails. And it takes so long with the dial-up connection in Italy, in the hotel - as you can imagine, everything just plodding along.

``So I was exhausted filming this movie. And I just decided to use that for my character, y'know? What do they say? 'If you can't fix it, feature it?' So that's what I did. And I got no sympathy. Everybody hated me for complaining that I was homesick. 'You're in Tuscany! You have no right to be complaining. Don't call me again!' ''

The cutoff was not total. Lane did manage to fly in her mom, singer and onetime Playboy centerfold Colleen Farrington, while she was filming at a beachside resort south of Rome. And Brolin, who had been caring for Lane's daughter, Eleanor, as well as his own two children, during her absence, managed to get the whole brood to Europe for turkey, Italian style.

``Josh came over and brought all the kids, and we had a Thanksgiving in Rome. That was great, thanks to Audrey, who had this huge maternal instinct in overdrive. She got cooks and gave them the recipes for turkey and all the fixins, and they did it as good or better than grandma. It was a very sweet, morale-boosting thing.''

Asked what she likes about her fiance, Lane quickly responds, ``Pretty much everything. I feel very lucky to have met my match and my mate. We met 10 years ago, but I'm glad I met him again. For us to have gotten together at this time in our lives couldn't be more perfect. We wouldn't have been ready earlier. We wouldn't have known how to dance, y'know what I mean? Stay flexible in the dance and all that.''

As for Brolin's formidable stepmother, Barbra Streisand, Lane could not be happier to have such a future mother-in-law.

``She is a lovely spirit and a very dynamic woman,'' says Lane, a longtime fan who once tried out for a role in the Babs-directed ``Yentl.'' ``I think one of the things that makes her so fascinating is that she's so fascinated. Being around somebody like that, even for five minutes, increases my awareness of the world I'm in. I can talk about anything with her and it just becomes a fascinating subject, which is not necessarily true of conversations with everybody.''

Lane's interest in interesting people is, she says, what sustained her through lean career times. Although she famously dropped out of the acting game for a few years after things did not live up to the promise of her early splash (``A Little Romance'' got her face on the cover of Time magazine as ``Hollywood's Whiz Kid''), the best parts of the job were never questioned.

``I would say being flexible'' was what got her past the difficult transition years, Lane reckons.

``And the priorities I had for myself, which were who I was going to work with - I mean, even if the role wasn't stellar or the distribution wasn't going to amount to a hill of beans in terms of people knowing about the project ... hell, man, it was George C. Scott. I mean, who's going to say no to working with him, or whatever?

``That, to me, was key, because I just loved being around greatness. If I could be satisfied with that - which got me through two decades - then the rest could come or not come as far as ambitions and being alone on a poster on a boulevard and those kinds of things. Up until now, getting me out of ingenue and into adult years, that has worked for me.''

That, and good advice.

``I could play the tape; I could push play and my dad would come out,'' she admits.

``Basically his philosophy was one bad apple spoils the whole experience for everybody, and it's a team effort about sharing in the responsibility of keeping the morale up rather than being a saboteur and making it all about your own stuff. I think that that's somewhat of a moral obligation, kind of unspoken.

``On this film, I definitely felt like Audrey's partner. She hasn't directed a lot of movies, so she was rather reliant on me in the sense of being ready to do all of what my job description is. She had her hands full.''

Lane also feels personally invested in what the movie version of ``Tuscan Sun'' has to say.

``I loved the theme - I found it very lifelike, at least from my personal life, the one I know - that, secretly, we never give up on ourselves. And we need to push ourselves out of comfort and into challenge in order to grow. Life will deliver you something that will force you to grow, and then you will be able to take on something else. It's a building process.''

And she appears to live that philosophy out, even now. Along with all the good news of late, Lane is embroiled in a lawsuit against the production company of what was supposed to be her next movie, ``Me Again,'' after co-star Bruce Willis' salary demands could not be met. Lane is seeking to recover her (much smaller) promised wages.

``There's really nothing to report - my lawyers are talking to their lawyers,'' says Lane, who cannot discuss the litigation in public but can explain how the production's collapse has affected her. ``I didn't work this summer, but it wound up that I could have time with my family unexpectedly. I would've planned a road trip had I known, but it's all right.''

Some would be bitter, haughty, aggrieved. Lane just flashes her standard, sunny smile.

``Even as a child, I always thought that it's so ill-advised to exalt oneself, because you're just deigning yourself to be kicked in the pants. So I just try to stay humble-slash-grateful, without making too big a deal about that, either.''

Bob Strauss, [phone]

bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com

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(1 -- cover -- color) Lover's LANE 

Beautiful and popular Diane Lane blossoms in `Tuscan Sun'

(2) no caption (Diane Lane)