Diane Lane

Diane Lane can let desire and doubt register in the same expression. Her face and posture do much of the work, particularly when she is playing a woman unsettled by romantic or domestic trouble. We rate her highly for making those feelings clear without spelling each one out. The danger is a part that asks her to be sympathetic and stops there.

Her early screen work took her from A Little Romance (1979) to Francis Ford Coppola’s The Outsiders (1983) and Rumble Fish (1983). She plays Patty in Rumble Fish, a film whose strongest pull is the brotherhood drama carried by Matt Dillon and Mickey Rourke. Its black-and-white images have enough force to justify much of Coppola’s grand manner. Some of the dialogue is far too solemn, though Rusty James’s longing gives the drama a feeling we can recognise. We recommend it with that caveat, while recognising that its chief pleasures tell us more about Coppola and his male leads than about Lane.

The leading roles in Unfaithful (2002) and Under the Tuscan Sun (2003) brought wider recognition after periods of independent films and television. The former gives her desire and moral conflict to play as Constance Sumner, and her physical expressiveness makes the character more interesting than the formulaic plotting. Frances Mayes in the latter helped establish her as a mature romantic lead. That was a useful change from the ingénue parts, allowing adult romantic experience to become the main business.

The subsequent supporting work includes Martha Kent in Man of Steel (2013) and the voice of Mom in Pete Docter’s Inside Out (2015). We were moved by Inside Out’s contrast between Riley’s inner and outer worlds, because it makes a child’s difficulty with change feel immediate. Lane is part of the cast that earns the film’s warmth, though the explanations occasionally slow the adventure. This is ensemble work, and the pleasure of the film does not depend on her being its centre. Choose it for the shared evening; choose Unfaithful for a closer look at Lane.