The rumors are true.
Award-winning stage and screen actress Diane Lane attended Savannah Christian Preparatory School her freshman year of high school. “My family had me down there,” she says.
“It was 1980 and we lived on Tybee Island. I remember it well.”
Mayor John Roussakis presented Lane with a key to the city. “I had no business getting that key to the city, but they didn’t have a whole lot of show biz types down there then,” she says. “I was grateful and totally surprised, and I still have it.”
Lane is looking forward to returning to Savannah soon for another presentation — the Outstanding Achievement in Cinema Award on Nov. 1 at the 15th annual Savannah Film Festival.
Stage pedigree
The daughter of drama coach Burt Lane and singer Colleen Farrington, Lane learned about show business at a young age.
“My father was an acting teacher in the 1950s, long before I was born,” she says.
“It was sort of a family joke: ‘When are you going to put the kid to work?’ On a lark, I went on an audition and I got the part.”
At the time, Lane was six and the audition was at Ellen Stewart’s La Mama Experimental Theater. She won a role in Andrei Serbian’s 1972 production of “Medea” and subsequently appeared in his productions of “Electra,” “The Trojan Women,” “The Good Woman of Szechuan” and “As You Like It” in New York and in theater festivals around the world.
“I played Medea’s daughter, who was sacrificed,” Lane says. “I died in every play I was in. I was always getting killed, but the meaning of the metaphor of death of innocence took about 20 years to understand.”
But Lane loved her time in the theater. “It was like running away and joining the circus,” she says. “I got to travel the world and the cast was like family.
“In some ways, I peaked early. The theater experience was so magical.”
Lane remembers watching the 1976 film “Taxi Driver” with Jodie Foster. “Jodie and I were the same age,” she says. “My father was a taxi driver at the time.”
But Lane had no interest in film. “I didn’t have the bug,” she says.
Her preference remained the theater. “It’s a good way to stay out of trouble,” she says. “It did give me an outlet for creativity and trusting.
“There is a value to what the arts offer people,” Lane says. “I saw both sides of it because I was so young.”
At 12, Lane was in a play with Meryl Streep. “I got to watch her become one of the most unbelievable actresses of all time,” Lane says.
“She took it to another level. I’ll never forget the night Helen Hayes came. Even Irene Worth came.”
In 1978, Lane’s film debut came about when director George Roy Hill cast her opposite Sir Laurence Olivier in “A Little Romance” when she was 13. “Films are a whole other thing,” she says.
“With films, you mean business,” Lane says. “Show business is not for fun and giggles any more.
“The stakes became so high and it all was so serious. Be careful what you wish for. Thirty-something years later, I marvel that I kept my feet on the ground.”
‘I still have to pinch myself’
One of Lane’s former co-stars, Matt Dillon, also is receiving an Outstanding Achievement in Cinema Award at this year’s festival.
“I worked three times with Matt Dillon,” she says. “I still have to pinch myself with some of the people I got to work with.
“They’re icons — Burt Lancaster, Rod Steiger, George C. Scott, Robert Duvall, Donald Sutherland, Jeff Bridges and Tommy Lee Jones in ‘Lonesome Dove.’
“I’ve worked with Richard Gere three times,” she says. “There’s Mark Walhberg and Viggo Mortenson, who was wonderful. I was in the first picture Tony Goldwyn directed, and I’ve worked four times with Francis Ford Coppola.”
But Lane didn’t leave the theater behind.
“I’m in the middle of doing a play in Chicago — ‘Sweet Bird of Youth,’ by Tennessee Williams,” she says.
That’s part of the reason Lane is able to come to the film festival. The other reason is legendary celebrity publicist Bobby Zarem, who lives in Savannah.
“I’ve known Bobby Zarem since I was one digit old,” Lane says. “I love to listen to his stories because he never runs out of them. Thank God — we need people like that.
“He’s been asking me to do this every year for years,” Lane says. “I’ve heard about SCAD and the film festival.
“When I started doing this play, I realized I’m free in October,” Lane says. “I knew it wasn’t going to last forever.”
An existential crisis sealed the deal.
“Here I am playing an actress in a play who is on the lam with a gigolo, feeling like a failure because people are snickering at her because she’s over the hill,” Lane says.
“I thought, ‘What if this play doesn’t turn out so hot? What if I can’t pull it off? What if I go into a deep funk because I identify with this character so much?’
“I decided I was going to say yes to Bobby Zarem,” Lane says. “I can lick my wounds and heal my psyche in Savannah.”
IF YOU GO
What: Diane Lane honored at Savannah Film Festival before screening of “Rust and Bone”
When: 7 p.m. Nov. 1
Where: Trustees Theater, 216 E. Broughton St.
Cost: $10 general public; $5 with SCAD ID; limited availability
Info: filmfest.scad.edu
FILM FEST CENTRAL
Go to savannahnow.com/filmfest for all our 2012 festival coverage and a look back at past years.