The Appeal of Hollywoodland: “Well, I always had a thing for George [Reeves]. He was the definition of Superman for me. I bought it hook, line and sinker in the sense that that's all he was. I never looked beyond the curtain or considered anything about actors versus the characters that I knew them to be as a child. So there was no black cloud over him in terms of the lore that the generation before me knew about. It was still on morning television when I was growing up.
It's interesting because there are so many layers to the story of George and I was very happy to portray some version of love in his life because I was a fan (laughing).”
The Real Toni Mannix: “It's interesting because I was sitting next to Dominick Dunne very recently at dinner. He knew Toni and I so wished that I had spoken with him prior to filming. Everyone has so much to tell me now. But I do feel that burden of responsibility to honor her as closely as I was told and could glean from things that I had read. I appreciated her vulnerability and how it came out all wrong. I just thought that everyone in the movie was a truly interesting character in their own merit. It's nice to be a thread in an interesting tapestry.”
Stepping Back in Time to the 1950s: “It's always refreshing to step into another time. I've often loved Westerns because it was so interesting to experience the oppression of being in the saddle and being in a corset – just to appreciate being able to complain about being in high heels and tight jeans when you're done with your day's work. There is always something to complain about, but it's just a difference reference once you see the limitations are in the time that you're portraying, and the freedoms of that time because it cuts both ways.”
Diane Lane on Aging Herself for the Role of Toni Mannix: “I think that it was a wonderful exhale to just embrace the fact that the alternative to aging is much worse. And frankly, having had a mother and watching her gracefully have a currency of life that was more meaningful than her youth – the vulnerability of a woman of years is a very interesting commodity to work with on film versus an almost callowness of youth that is assigned to men, but I think that women possess it as well. It's just something that's easy to come by and hard to lose. Certainly Toni Mannix, that's a very important element of the relationship that she had with George which was her vulnerability of being the older woman, that whole element which today you can be 18n months older and it means a great deal evidently. So I'm just saying that, again, it's about the '50's versus 2006 or wherever we are. I think that it meant even more then.”
