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This year, after 32 films in a career that spans 32 years, Lane, 38, was nominated for her first Oscar as the adulterous wife in the steamy drama Unfaithful.
In July, she became engaged to Josh Brolin, nine years after she divorced Christopher Lambert.
Lane and Brolin, 35, have been living together for 18 months with her daughter Eleanor, 10, and his daughter Eden, 10, and son Trevor, 14, from his marriage to Deborah Adair.
"It was a wonderful year for Josh and I when no one really knew we were together. When we chose to attend the Oscars together that all changed," she says.
For Lane, the Oscars were, and still remain, a surreal experience.
"It was completely other-worldly. I feel like I've been to Mars and back. That red carpet might as well have been the red sand on Mars."
She insists the experience "is not quite tangible yet. Winning the statue would have been proof I was actually there. I've read about it since and watched videos of the night, but I still don't really remember being there."
Lane still has difficulty recalling the moment when she heard her name called at the nominations.
"I have literally, successfully blocked that moment out. What I do remember is that Josh and I went into Eleanor's bedroom and told her that her mother had been nominated for an Oscar."
Lane is grateful her first nomination came when it did: "I am so happy to have been so happy in my personal life. I had Josh to share all this with, so it was double happiness."
Having daughters the same age has its ups and downs.
"There is definitely an element of rivalry, but then there is a wonderful new bond between the girls. I'm finding parenting to be a little easier because I am no longer the only voice."
Lane says it has only been this past couple of years raising her daughter that she realizes she really did miss having a childhood.
Her parents split shortly after she was born and she was raised separately by both of them. When she was six, her father, who was a part-time acting coach, took her to an audition for the La Mama Experimental Theatre Club of New York's production of Medea.
"Dad asked if I wanted to audition for a play. I told him I loved to play. I had no idea what he was really talking about."
Lane got the role and, for the next five years, travelled extensively throughout Europe with the theatre company. One of her yearly summer stops was the Italian province of Tuscany, where Lane's new movie, the blissfully-romantic Under the Tuscan Sun, is set.
In Under the Tuscan Sun which was inspired by Frances Mayes' best-selling book, Lane plays a recently-divorced writer and book critic who flees to Italy to try to mend her broken heart and broken life.
It is through restoring the beauty of the centuries-old house she buys in Tuscany that Lane's character rediscovers beauty, strength and truth in her own life.
"It's a story with such hope and such promise that I felt blessed to have been offered the part." She concedes "there is an element of fantasy in the story but I think that applies in real life whenever any of us sets out to reinvent or reinvigorate ourselves."
With Brolin by her side and scripts pouring in, Lane, like her character in Under the Tuscan Sun, feels she has a new lease on life.
She won't say when she and Brolin will wed but, when that happens, Barbra Streisand will become her mother-in-law through her own marriage to James Brolin.
"Of course, that is daunting, but in the most wonderful way. I have been a huge fan of Barbra's for as long as I can remember."
Lane met Streisand long before she first met Brolin: "I auditioned for the role Amy Irving eventually got in Yentle."