Diane Lane grateful for having worked with Laurence Olivier, Coppolas

LOS ANGELES—When she was only 18, Diane Lane worked for the first time with director Francis Ford Coppola in not one but two films, “The Outsiders” and “Rumble Fish.” Now, Francis’ wife, Eleanor Coppola, who is 81, makes her feature directing debut with Diane in “Paris Can Wait.”

At 52—and looking great—Diane has had quite a career. When she was only 13, Diane made her film debut in “A Little Romance” with no less than Laurence Olivier, who declared that she was “the new Grace Kelly.” She went on to appear in film and TV shows, including the sexy drama “Unfaithful,” opposite Richard Gere and Olivier Martinez, for which she earned Oscar and Golden Globe best actress nods.

Now, she’s working with the other Coppola, Eleanor, the mom of Sofia who just won Cannes’ best director prize for “The Beguiled.”

As a documentary filmmaker, Eleanor won an Emmy and bagged a Directors Guild of America nomination for “Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse,” her riveting chronicle of what Francis experienced while making his epic “Apocalypse Now” in the Philippines.

Scoring 100 percent in Rotten Tomatoes, “Hearts…” was acclaimed as “fascinating” and “unparalleled,” owing to Eleanor’s intimate depiction of the struggles that Francis faced while shooting the seminal Vietnam war film in Laguna and Quezon.

Eleanor wrote “Paris Can Wait” based on what happened after Cannes 2009 when she and Francis were supposed to proceed to Eastern Europe. Eleanor had a bad head cold, which prevented her from flying. Francis’ French business associate, who was driving back to Paris, offered Eleanor a ride to the City of Light, where the Coppolas had an apartment.

The seven-hour car drive took 40 hours, instead, as the Frenchman entertained Eleanor with lavish cuisine stops along the way.

In the film, instead of a director, Anne (Diane) has a popular producer-husband (Alec Baldwin), who is busy and distracted. Arnaud Viard plays the flirty French guy who charms Anne and stops several times for seductive feasts, to smell the roses and an overnight stay in a hotel.

Diane memorably plays a woman intrigued by this man who is blessed by such joie de vivre and orders the finest dishes and wines, in stark contrast to her cell phone-obsessed husband.

In real life, Diane is divorced from two actors, Josh Brolin and French thespian Christopher Lambert, with whom she has a daughter, Eleanor, a model. Diane will be seen next in “The Silent Man” and “Justice League” (as Martha Kent).

Excerpts from our chat:

What is your secret to being ageless? I give the credit to my mother and things that are out of my control, because I think a lot of it has to do with genetics. So it’s kind of cheating but, at the same time, I eat healthy. Whatever my vices are, I do them in strict moderation.

Part of it is enjoying life.

I believe that life shows, and joy shows. I couldn’t have done this movie in 2013. I was just not happy enough. My mother was dying. I was going through a divorce (from Josh Brolin). It was a tough time. I’m glad that I got to play all these other roles, which were dark, had me in tears or was full of drama and angst so that I could fully appreciate this experience, selfishly.

It was an honor to be present for Eleanor’s “helmswomanship.” I really enjoyed [working with] her, vicariously.

What do you remember about Eleanor’s “Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse”? I saw it a while ago. I allowed her to introduce herself for the first time, in a way, because this was not as a wife, mother, documentarian or observer. She was going to be a collaborative person who had a vision of her story. That’s the person I got to know.

We all play different roles at different times in our life. At this moment, Eleanor was meeting me not as a 17-year-old.

I just remembered how it (the film) made me feel—which was, fear, seeing chaos, just being trapped and out of control at the same time.

Now that you’ve been directed by both Francis and Eleanor, how are they similar or different? After being a couple for any length of time, you balance each other out. There are qualities that are almost assigned to one person.

How adventurous in real life are you about exploring places on your own? You have to understand that I’m in a unique situation because I was so young when I got to go to Italy, Germany, France, Scotland, Finland, Lebanon, Iran and all these other places when I was 7 to 11 years old. My parents did not go with me to those countries. I’ve been to Venice and Paris a couple of times by the time I did “The Little Romance.”

What’s your relationship to Paris? I don’t want to say it’s my sixth time in Paris, because it sounds like a brag, right? French was the first language that I loved to try to speak when I was 7.

I speak French a bit. My daughter speaks French. I was married to a French guy (actor Christopher Lambert). My first boyfriend was a Parisian. So it’s natural for me to never go too far away from Paris, and Europe in general.

Can you talk about all these fine actors you have worked with? I worked with George C. Scott, Burt Lancaster and Laurence Olivier. That sounds like I must be from another generation. But I was a young person able to work with those giants. I don’t even know how to begin—Robert Duvall, Donald Sutherland, Richard Gere and Liam Neeson. I’m very, ridiculously blessed.

If you could ask Laurence Olivier a question today, what would that question be? The first question that comes to mind is very selfish, because a lot of my association with him has been his quote (Laurence called his costar Diane, then 14, as “the new Grace Kelly”). I would say, “Why Grace Kelly? Am I going to marry a European prince? What’s the deal?”

I certainly took it as a tremendous compliment, because the woman (Grace) was a screen goddess.

So I would ask him, because he was a very clever man in terms of being honest to a fault. I remember Laurence rehearsing with my father at the bar in Verona before he was going to give the first interview of many years to the New York Times the next day.

My father was thrilled. My father was an acting teacher. So there he was, talking to Lord Larry. My dad came back and told me some of the things that Laurence had said to him. I was amazed and horrified.

I’d ask him (Laurence), what was his motivation to insist on riding his own bicycle (in the movie)? Because he was in great pain at that point, with physical maladies.

They had created a motorized bicycle for him to get through the streets of Italy during that part of the film when we’re hiding in a bicycle race.

He was reportedly very offended that they had created this automatic bike for him. There were hills involved and they didn’t want him to get hurt. He was going to do it, even though it caused him pain. That’s a level of integrity that not many people would necessarily have.

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