Sharp-talking former Coppola favorite turned indie gueen is as philosophical as ever...

She's found it difficult to adjust. "My publist said, 'Go out and spend five grand at Prada.' And I did it - Prada, Guzzi...I came home with three items. I'm probably gonna get yelled at for this," she adds sheepishly. In fact, she needn't worry. Lane's willingness to tell it like it has seen her through nearly three decades in film and theatre. She's starred with every major heartthrob of her generation and seen every possible pun on her last name ('Fast Lane', 'Slow Lane', etc.). At age six, she started globe-trotting (sans parents) with theatre groups and auditioning for all and sundry in the film world - including a particularly withering (and unsuccessful) meeting with Milos Forman - before starring in two seminal 1983 Francis Ford Coppola films (The Outsiders, Rumble Fish) that landed her on the cover of TIME. "It brought TIME down to my level - it didn't bring me up to TIME's level," Lane notes modestly. "It had nothing to do with my popularity."

Her reputation for being a tough cookie makes her laugh. In reality, she is friendly, warm and real, but does have enough biting wit and chutzpah to instil fear if she were ever to ask you outside for a quiet word..."The tough cookie years," she muses, rolling her eyes. "That was something they hung on me like a Christmas ornament. When I really young yet feeling very old, I offered up a lot of myself to the press; I knew it was good copy. And I knew I had a perspective on the business and my individuality that I wasn't entitled to have. But I came out of that fine because it was jsut a phase."

She's been working steadily ever since (a total of nearly 40 films), but fame has again knocked on her door thanks to A Walk To The Moon, in whick she gives an amazing nuanced performance as a 60s housewife who throws over her safe, suburban lifestyle for free-love fun. "It was so exemplary because you really got the flavour of everybody that the main character's experience touched - you got the domino effect of her emotional crises." And just how is she dealing with the domino effect of all the attention A Walk On The Moon has inspired? "I read your interview with Sandra Bullock (Empire, January)," she says, "and she was saying how she just had to take a hiatus, was going to lose her mind. I got to the brink of that when I did The Cotton Club (1984) and I took off two years. You're seeing an example of the stress to deliver the goods... 'Deliver the goods, baby,' she says, snapping her fingers. She smiles knowinly. "I have just enough attention to feel glamorous and important."

"The script describes our relationship as basically public foreplay..." - on her forthcoming role opposite Mark Wahlberg.

Currently she's shooting The Perfect Storm (from the Sebastian Junger bestseller), with George Clooney and Mark Wahlberg. "I don't know why I love this movie so much. I don't go to sea, so I'm probably the only one who'll have a glowing report about it because I don't get wet," she reveals. "And Mark and I - the script describes our relationship as basically public foreplay. So I've that to look forward to..." And then there's George Clooney. Her face lights up. "We were having some trailer trash talk the other day - the woman playing my mother-in-law said, 'Do you know, all this time, I thought I was supposed to be George Clooney's mother. I had this picture of oyu doing this love scene with him.' I said, 'Honey, if it had been George, I would've come out of it pregnant!" She lets out throaty laugh; but for her co-stars, Lane is happily single. "Part of it is I judged my mother much too harshly for her dating life. Being her only child, I wanted her completely to myself. And that's a precious thing that I've been enjoying very much - my daughter (Eleanor, six, by actor Christoper Lambert) still climbs into my bed every night. To kick her out because somebody else is in there, well, I don't want to face that moment - it's not worth the conversation! No man I've met yet is worth that..."

Catherine Scroop