Kelly Lynch Biography
Blonde former model turned self-proclaimed character actress in films and TV of the late 1980s and 90s. Lynch made her acting debut as the titular character in the straight-to-video sci-fi quickie, “Osa” (1985) while pregnant with her daughter, Shane. She turned up again in 1988 in a bit part in “Bright Lights, Big City” and a larger role as the nymphomaniac wife of Bryan Brown in the Tom Cruise vehicle, “Cocktail”. She received more attention playing opposite Patrick Swayze in the action flick, “Road House” (1989).
Lynch attracted serious critical attention with a moving, resolutely unglamorous performance as the junkie wife of Matt Dillon in Gus Van Sant’s moody, picaresque “Drugstore Cowboy” (1989). She subsequently appeared as the love-struck attorney of Mickey Rourke in Michael Cimino’s remake, “Desperate Hours” (1990) and John Hughes’ family comedy, “Curley Sue” (1991). Lynch was better served by the unconventional romantic comedy, “Three of Hearts” (1993). Co-scripted by her husband, Mitch Glazer, and co-starring Sherilyn Fenn and William Baldwin, the film depicted a triangle involving two female lovers and a male escort. Lynch also appeared in a 1993 French co-production, “For Better and For Worse/R.S.V.P.”, a whimsical comedy featuring the Pope deciding to attend the wedding of a troubled couple so as to brighten his own public image.
- Born:
on 01/31/1959 in Minneapolis, Minnesota - Job Titles:
Actor, Disco dancer, Model, Stewardess
Family
- Sister: Robin Lynch.
Milestones
- 1979 At age 20 was in a head-on automobile accident that crushed her legs and took a year’s recovery during which time she became addicted to painkillers (date approximate)
- 1985 Film acting debut (as title character) in “Osa”
- 1988 First role in a major feature, “Bright Lights, Big City”
- 1989 Garnered attention for her performance as Matt Dillon’s junkie wife in “Drugstore Cowboy”
- 1991 Starred in the John Hughes comedy “Curly Sue” with James Belushi
- 1993 Co-starred with William Baldwin and Sherilyn Fenn in the romantic comedy “Three of Hearts”
- 1995 Starred opposite Denzel Washington in the sci-fi thriller “Virtuosity”
- 1998 Cast opposite Billy Bob Thornton and Hank Azaria in “Homegrown” written and directed by Stephen Gyllenhaal
- 2000 Featured in “Charlie’s Angels” starring Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore and Lucy Liu; based on the popular 70’s TV show
- 2005 Cast in “Dallas 362,” the directorial debut of Scott Caan
- 2005 Cast in the thriller “The Jacket” with Adrien Brody
- Modeled with New York’s Elite Agency
- Moved to New York City
- Performed in the local Children’s Theatre Company in Minneapolis MN
- Was a flight attendant for Northwest Airlines
- Worked as a disco dancer and taught dancing at Arthur Murray dance studios
- Worked directing at Guthrie Theater as apprentice
Diane Lane Biography
A stage veteran before she made her first films as a teenager, Diane Lane landed on the cover of TIME magazine in a 1979 profile of rising child stars. Few of those featured, however, were as lucky as Lane in making the transition to adult roles, and while her career has had the requisite peaks and valleys, she has continued to land challenging and diverse roles ranging from a frontier prostitute in the acclaimed miniseries “Lonesome Dove” (CBS, 1989) to sexually awakening Jewish housewife of “A Walk on the Moon” (1999) to her Oscar-nominated turn as a straying wife in the provocative “Unfaithful” (2002) .
The only daughter of parents who split within weeks of her birth, the petite blonde Lane was raised by her father in NYC. By the age of six, she had begun her showbiz career in earnest with a role in “Medea” staged by the famed LaMaMa theater company. Throughout the remainder of the 1970s, Lane amassed numerous stage credits, including a world tour with LaMaMa and in various productions at the New York Shakespeare Festival (most notably Elizabeth Swados’ “Runaways”). While she was deemed inappropriate model material, the poised, attractive teenager quickly made the transition to films. Her breakthrough role came in “A Little Romance” (1979), as a precocious American girl who experiences first love with an equally gifted French boy, abetted by an eccentric Englishman. That she shared screen time with Laurence Olivier and proved a strong and engaging presence helped propel her career and made her the “It girl” of the moment.
Lane capitalized on her growing fame with TV-movies (e.g., “Miss All-American”, CBS 1982) and the femme lead opposite Matt Dillon in a pair of films adapted from S E Hinton novels, “The Outsiders” and Rumble Fish” (both 1983), both directed by Francis Ford Coppola. The helmer has admitted to being infatuated with the starlet which is a possible explanation for his hiring her to co-star with Richard Gere in the ill-fated “The Cotton Club” (1984). A sprawling would-be epic, the movie suffered greatly from the lack of chemistry between Gere and Lane (although she looked fabulous in the period clothing) as well as from her miscasting–at 18, she was clearly too young to play a world-weary gangster’s moll who tempts a musician into an affair. It didn’t help her career, either, when she declined the part of the mermaid in “Splash” in favor of portraying a rock star diva in Walter Hill’s muddled musical “Streets of Fire” (also 1984).
After a hiatus to regroup, Lane attempted to forge a screen persona but the fickleness of Tinseltown reduced her to appearing in drivel like “Lady Beware” (1987), She did have a moderately good turn as a stripper opposite Matt Dillon in the noirish “The Big Town” (also 1987), but few saw the flick in its theatrical release. One of her best 80s roles came on the small screen as the prostitute who accompanies a group of men on a cattle drive in the award-winning adaptation of Larry McMurtry’s novel “Lonesome Dove”.
Despite her fine work and an Emmy nomination, good follow-up roles failed to materialize in the early 90s. Lane co-starred as the daughter of a man who may have been a Nazi sympathizer in the 1990 HBO drama “Descending Angel” and made the most of her limited screen time as Paulette Goddard in Richard Attenborough’s reverent biopic “Chaplin” (1992). Once again television provided a pair of fine roles: as the young version of the titular “Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All” (CBS, 1994) and as Stella to Alec Baldwin’s Stanley Kowalski in a remake of “A Streetcar Named Desire” (CBS, 1995). In between, the actress attempted to raise her international stock by hitching on to Sylvester Stallone’s renown, but the resulting film, “Judge Dredd” (1995) was a dismal mess. A reteaming with director Walter Hill as a luminous woman from the past of “Wild Bill” (also 1995) showcased her gifts but that film proved a box-office disappointment as well. Lane slowly rebounded as the mother of a boy with a rare genetic disease that aged him rapidly (and turned him into Robin Williams!) in “Jack”, directed by Francis Ford Coppola and by playing a competent Secret Service agent in the thriller “Murder at 1600″ (1997).
The 1969-set indie “A Walk on the Moon” (1999), Tony Goldwyn’s directorial debut, however, allowed her to fully realize her screen potential. As a vaguely unhappy Jewish wife and mother who embarks on an affair, Lane earned some of the best reviews of her career and rejuvenated her standing in Hollywood. She subsequently began the millennium co-starring opposite Bill Pullman in the TV remake of “The Virginian” (TNT, 2000) and portrayed Mark Wahlberg’s land-bound girlfriend in “The Perfect Storm” (2000). Even as audiences were growing ever aware that her acting abilities were equal to her enduring beauty, she still found herself cast in relatively minor roles in films of varying quality, from the terrific such as “My Dog Skip” (2000) to the terrible, like the thriller “The Glass House” (2001).
Finally, in 2002 Lane was cast in a role that perfectly showcased her remarkable talents when she took the lead in “Unfaithful,” director Adrian Lyne’s psychological and often erotic look at a mature woman who has no reason to upset her happy home life but nevertheless embarks on a torrid affair with a young lover that ultimately results in tragedy. Lane’s sensual, natural and conflicted performance–better, actually, than the movie itself–won her heaps of accolades, including an Academy Award nomination as Best Actress, and marked a new high point in her career.
At last established as a bankable leading lady, Lane’s follow-up was the lighter-weight romantic comedy “Under the Tuscan Sun” (2003), based on the popular book by author Frances Mayes, in which Lane played a 35-year-old San Francisco writer who makes an impulsive home purchase in Tuscany and discovers romance as she renovates her dilapidated new house.
- Born:
on 01/22/1965 in New York, New York - Job Titles:
Actor
Family
- Daughter: Eleanor Jasmine Lambert. born on September 5, 1993; father, Christopher Lambert
- Father: Burt Lane. divorced from Lane’s mother on February 4, 1965; had custody of Lane and served as her manager; died on February 22, 2002 at age 71
- Mother: Colleen Farrington. was a Playboy playmate in 1957; divorced from Lane’s father on February 4, 1965; relocated to Florida; Lane reportedly had a stormy adolescent relationship with her mother
Significant Others
- Husband: Christopher Lambert. born in 1957; met in 1984; married in 1988; divorced in 1994
- Companion: Danny Cannon. British; born in 1968; met while filming “Judge Dredd” (1995); together from c. 1994 to c. 1996;
- Companion: Jon Bon Jovi. briefly dated in the 1980s
- Companion: Josh Brolin. dating as of January 2002
- Companion: Rick Kolster. together from c. 1980 to c. 1983
Education
- University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California
Milestones
- — Cast as a massage therapist opposite Donald Sutherland in “Fierce People” directed by Griffin Dunne (lensed 2004)
- 1965 Parents divorced when she was 13 days old; father regained custody
- 1971 Appeared in stage productions with La Mama and the Public Theater between the ages of six and thirteen, most notably in the Tony-nominated stage musical “Runaways” (1977-1978)
- 1971 Professional acting debut at age six in the La Mama production of “Medea”, directed by Andrei Serban
- 1979 Appeared on the cover of Time magazine (August 13 issue)
- 1979 Feature acting debut as a precocious American child living in Paris in “A Little Romance”
- 1980 Was hit in the eye with a tennis ball, resulting in a permanently dilated pupil
- 1981 Network TV-movie debut, “Child Bride of Short Creek” (NBC)
- 1982 Had title role as a beauty contest winner in “Miss All-American” (CBS)
- 1983 Cast by Francis Ford Coppola in “The Outsiders” and “Rumble Fish”; first screen collaborations with Matt Dillon
- 1984 Reportedly turned down the role of the mermaid in “Splash” to star as rock singer Ellen Aim in “Streets of Fire”, helmed by Walter Hill
- 1984 Reteamed with Coppola as the female lead in “The Cotton Club”
- 1987 Reteamed with Dillon in “The Big Town”
- 1988 First onscreen pairing with Christopher Lambert, “Love Dream”
- 1989 Earned an Emmy Award nomination for her starring turn as prositute Lorena Wood in the popular CBS miniseries “Lonesome Dove”
- 1990 Portrayed a woman whose father may have had ties to the Nazis in the HBO drama “Descending Angel”
- 1992 Portrayed Paulette Goddard in Richard Attenborough’s biopic “Chaplin”
- 1992 Reteamed with then-husband Lambert in “Knight Moves”
- 1994 Starred as the youthful incarnation of the title character in the CBS miniseries “Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All”
- 1995 Cast as Stella Kowalski opposite Alec Baldwin’s Stanley and Jessica Lange’s Blanche in the CBS remake of “A Streetcar Named Desire”
- 1995 Co-starred with Sylvester Stallone in the futuristic “Judge Dredd”
- 1995 Reteamed with director Walter Hill for the revisionist Western “Wild Bill”
- 1996 Played the mother of a ten-year-old suffering from a rare genetic disorder that makes him age in “Jack”, helmed by Coppola and starring Robin Williams
- 1997 Co-starred as a competent Secret Service agent in “Murder at 1600″
- 1998 Appeared opposite Gena Rowlands in the CBS adaptation of the Off-Broadway play “Grace & Glorie”
- 1999 Had one of her best adult feature roles as a cheating wife in “A Walk on the Moon”
- 2000 Played Mark Wahlberg’s girlfriend in “The Perfect Storm”
- 2000 Starred opposite Bill Pullman in the small screen remake of “The Virginia”, directed by Pullman
- 2001 Co-starred in the thriller “The Glass House” as the guardian of a wealthy teen
- 2002 Reteamed on screen with Richard Gere in “Unfaithful”; received nominations for a Golden Globe, a SAG and an Oscar for her leading role performance
- 2003 Starred in the romantic drama feature “Under the Tuscan Sun”; earned a golden globe nomination for best actress in a musical or comedy
- 2003 Sued a movie production company for about $2.7 million, alleging it failed to finance a film she was slated to star in or sign up Bruce Willis as her co-star.
- 2005 Starred in “Must Love Dogs” as a 40-something preschool teacher and divorcee who runs through various dating ploys to find her future husband
- Raised in NYC, primarily living in residential hotels
- Reportedly turned down the lead in “”Pretty Baby” (1978)
- Returned to the stage to play Olivia in Andrei Serban’s staging of “Twelfth Night” at the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts