Diane Lane is an American actress. She made her motion picture debut in George Roy Hill's 1979 film A Little Romance. The film that could have catapulted her to star status, Streets of Fire (1984), was both a commercial and critical failure, and her career languished as a result. After taking a break, Lane returned to acting to appear in The Big Town and Lady Beware, but did not make another big impression on a sizable audience until the western miniseries Lonesome Dove (1989), for which she was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie. Lane earned further recognition for her role in A Walk on the Moon (1999), for which she was nominated for the Independent Spirit Award for Best Female Lead. This was followed by several film roles of varying degrees of success such as My Dog Skip, The Perfect Storm, The Glass House, and Hardball.

Streets of Fire is a 1984 American action crime neo-noir film directed by Walter Hill, from a screenplay by Hill and Larry Gross. Described on the poster and in the opening credits as "A Rock & Roll Fable", the film combines elements of the automobile culture and music from the 1950s with the fashion style and sociology of the 1980s. Starring Michael Paré, Diane Lane, Rick Moranis, Amy Madigan, Willem Dafoe, Deborah Van Valkenburgh, E.G. Daily, and Bill Paxton, the film follows ex-soldiers Tom Cody (Paré) and McCoy (Madigan) as they embark on a mission to rescue Cody's ex-girlfriend Ellen Aim (Lane), who was kidnapped by Raven Shaddock (Dafoe), the leader of an outlaw motorcycle gang called The Bombers.