Diane Lane interview
Even Diane Lane admits that she’s an anomaly. At 43, the actress is still getting lead roles in major films and is still considered a sex symbol, whereas many female actresses her age unfortunately seem to go off the radar. Best known recently for her Academy Award-nominated turn in Unfaithful, Lane made her debut in film at 13 and graced the cover of Time at 14. She had major success as a teen in 80s classics like The Outsiders and Rumble Fish and then made a surprising resurgence in the late 90s. She will been seen next in the potential megahit Jumper.
Lane’s new film is Untraceable, a horrific thriller in which Lane plays an FBI agent that investigates cyber crimes and comes across a website called killwithme.com, where the victims are killed off online, each time a little quicker as the popularity of the site grows.
She says, “To do a thriller like this, I wanted it to be smart enough to make me think--and it does.” While her role required her to be extremely tech savvy, she admits that’s just acting. She says, “I’m lousy at it. I’m allowed to hang out in the room with these people. I can’t really participate. It’s different. They are born into it. I very reluctantly started paying attention when I was 30. I just don’t have the brain cells to rub together fast enough, you know?”
Our ace journalist Paul Salfen conducted this exclusive interview with Diane Lane.
Not being versed in all of this, were you surprised by how many people are online trying to be anonymous about the things that they do?
The whole point, certainly when the internet was invented and on computers in the 80s, is we would invent a new identity. “I’ll be so sexy online” and “I’ll be 20 again” or whatever people have in their heads – “I’ll get all the babes and I’ll have all my hair back”. This was the vapidity of the original fantasy that people created about what being online was going to do for them. I mean, it’s just the lowest common denominator possible, so it’s interesting what comes. We think it and then we make it real, to a certain degree. And then we have all these cautionary tales that grow out of it. I’m so glad the FBI exists after seeing what’s on the internet and how they’re stopping the bad guys.
Your character was based on a real woman in the FBI and you got to work closely with her. Were you surprised by what she had to do on a daily basis?
She was great. I adore her. It helped a lot to have “the real McCoy”. She was amazing and it was very comforting to see somebody who was so capable, so totally womanly. The more I got exposed to the need for these people to exist - they’re angels. Literally their job is to do intervention against malicious attempts on the internet. I’m so naïve I didn’t know that viruses do not spontaneously occur, like in nature. I mean, doesn’t the term virus imply it just grew in a Petri dish? Oh no, some brainiac sat down and figured out how to make everybody miserable, like an arsonist. Why? Do you have nothing better to do with your life? I guess not. I’m so disappointed in human beings and myself for not knowing better.
What was it like to see these real crimes and investigations go down firsthand?
It didn’t take more than five minutes of sitting with her to witness bad behavior and wish that that was just in a movie and it wasn’t real. This one, I’m glad was just in a movie and wasn’t real. So I can’t really go into details to protect her identity. I don’t think it would be appropriate for me to. But I saw some things that I wish I hadn’t seen. I think I want the FBI to continue doing their good work.
So you found this all intriguing outside of filming?
I feel like I have some things in common with the law officers that I got to know. I’m always looking for motive and tracking backwards looking for why would somebody do this? What is the justification for anything, whether it’s the scene in the film that I’m filming – just to get to the truth of things.
As a mother with kids on the internet, did all of this bug you out a little?
I know what kind of fire would be under me if my daughter was on the computer in this story. It brings it home a little bit closer even still within your own house because I’m a parent of teenagers and I know that we would be having a conversation about the world if this were going on for real in the world. It’s a scary premise. I have teenagers in my house and this is the movie they want to see. They really relate to it. It’s their world. The internet - they have such entitlement with it, they have control over it. They feel like it’s more theirs than the physical domain reality that they live in.
DISCUSS ON GUTS AND GORY
