by Paul Fischer

Diane Lane admits that she can relate only too well to what her latest character endures throughout her latest movie, Under the Tuscan Sun. Lane plays a San Francisco writer whose perfect life has just taken an unexpected detour. Her recent divorce has left her with terminal writer's block and extremely depressed, and her best friend, Patti (Sandra Oh), is beginning to think she might never recover. When Patti buys her a ticket to Tuscany, Frances instinctively decides to buy a villa in the beautiful Tuscan countryside. There, she decides to begin anew, restoring her new home, where she eventually finds the fulfillment she was searching for, including love, family and friendship. Lane, herself a divorcee from French actor Christopher Lambert, says she immediately identified with Frances' emotional roller coaster. "I felt when I read the script that there were no tricks I had to learn or elements that she possessed that I didn't know anything about," Lane explains, chatting in a Los Angeles hotel room. "I could say that I had experienced everything that she had experienced and then some, so, it was simple for me to understand her emotionally and to play her." Lane even concedes that she "was very eager to purge myself of all those feelings that I had and have a place to put them."

Lane says it was a relief to finally be purged of those feelings shooting the film, "especially within the boundaries of humor, within the context of having a sense of humor about oneself unwittingly, which, after all, is the fun of being in a movie." Not so much fun was being away from her husband, Josh Brolin, despite the gorgeous Tuscany location. "I got no sympathy when I would get homesick because everyone says you're in Tuscany -- whereas if you were in Chernobyl they would feel sorry for you!" she laughs. "But I was so homesick! Three months is a long time and I had just gotten my daughter started into fourth grade. I was very much in love and I hated leaving home. I felt sick, like a very guilty mother, that I'm in the most romantic place in the world and away from everybody. It was torture." Still, she was able to bring some of that angst into her acting. "I looked tired because I was. Method, okay? I was up all night, with phones, emails that moved very slow in the hotel with the Internet connection. Then by the time I'd get off the computer, my daughter would be home from school so I'd call her. I'd just be up to 2:00 every night."

Contrasting the experience of Tuscan Sun to her previous role in the intense Unfaithful, she at least gets to make out with yet another dishy European actor, this time in the guise of Italy's Raoul Bova. Lane laughs. "Well, we always have to have that. It's part of [my] contract. Forget the back-end shot; I just want romance."

Off screen, Lane says that in some strange way, the new relationship with Brolin has made her more of a romantic. "I think monogamy is where it's at. It's a hell of a lot better than celibacy, which is my other option, so I am very content."