COFFEE WITH ... LAUREN LANE

'Nanny' co-star now nurtures a 'Clean House' in South Austin-
Actress Lauren Lane keeps her life in balance

By Jeanne Claire van Ryzin
AMERICAN-STATESMAN ARTS WRITER
Thursday, July 17, 2008

Lauren Lane chats casually with baristas at a Starbucks on South Lamar Boulevard as she orders latte and an ice water on a recent weekday afternoon. The baristas know her. She in turn calls them by their names. Clearly, Lane is regular here.

Actually for more than a decade, Lane was a regular on prime-time television. Among many other shows, the Oklahoma-born, Arlington-raised Lane was on the police drama "Hunter," then on a multi-episode arc on the popular "L.A. Law" and finally she played the tactless, ambitious and unlucky in love C.C. Babcock on "The Nanny" for the shows entire 145 episode six-year run.

Although its oven-hot outside, Lane arrives at Starbucks crisply but casually dressed, relaxed and unruffled. She has strikingly beautiful white hair, bright blue eyes, and she moves with an easy confidence.

She's taller than she seems on television.

The question begs to be asked: Why leave the biz? Why exit Los Angeles six years ago? Why land in Austin?

"I was 40," she says with a shrug. "And L.A. is not kind to women over 40. And there's no need to elaborate on why that is."

Don't get her wrong. Lane isn't bitter. She's exudes a kind of down-to-earth practicalness as she explains why she left Tinseltown to settle in Austin. The 47-year-old Lane is a single mom to 10-year-old Kate. When Lane's gig on "The Nanny" ended in 1999, she became acutely aware of the lack of roles for women who are, well, not barely-past-adolescent ingenues. "And I didn't want to fight that fight," she says. "I had seen the struggle other actresses had faced — the pressures, the humiliations — and I didn't want to spend the next chapter of my life like that."

And besides, Lane wanted her daughter to grow up somewhere that was not the epicenter of the celebrity-driven image-crazed entertainment industry.

It was easy for Lane to find her way to Austin. Texas is home turf. Lane didn't have to leave home to graduate from the University of Texas-Arlington with a degree in theater. And she has plenty of family scattered around the Lone Star State, including her sister Kim Lane, a writer who is founder and editor of the popular AustinMama.com Web site.

"Theater in Austin is thriving," Lane says. "And Austin seemed like a place to carve out a comfortable life. Of course, at first I didn't know how I was going to do that."

But through a series of fortuitous connections, Lane landed a guest gig at the University of Texas where she taught acting for two semesters. That led to her current jog: assistant professor of theater at Texas State University-San Marcos.

"I love teaching, I love my students," she says, the rich timber in her voice melting to almost a purr. "Really, I have a great balance in my life right now."

She does. On top of the rewarding teaching career she's established, the great little house in South Austin she bought and remodeled for herself and her daughter, the proximity to family, Lane hasn't left the limelight altogether. Last week, she began a five-week run starring in "The Clean House" at Zach Theatre. A finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize, the winsome comedy by Sarah Ruhl finds a young Brazilian woman employed as a maid for a driven, dirt-hating, humorless successful female doctor. Only the maid doesn't want to be a maid — she longs to write the most perfect joke in the world. Clashing sensibilities set off a chain of events that sends everybody spinning. Lane plays the character named, coincidentally, Lane, the female doctor who finds her world upended.

"It's sort of magical realism come to the stage," the actress says. "There's a warm humor and a lot of striking visual images to the script."

Lane is an admirer of Ruhl's sense of language as a playwright, its verbal richness and sharp timing. Well, Lane is a devotee of good writing of all kinds in general. She wants to exchange titles of recently read books with a reporter; she gushes over "August: Osage County," the literate tragicomedy currently tearing up Broadway that just won the Tony Award; and she can't over-recommend the short stories of George Saunders or Alice Munro.

And as much as she'd like to, she can't stay and gab forever over coffee. She has to be at the theater in two hours to get ready for the opening preview of "The Clean House."

But first she has to go grocery shopping

"That's glamorous, isn't it?" she says wryly and then flashes a big smile.

It is if it's part of the balance.


Quelle: AMERICAN-STATESMAN ARTS WRITER