Nathan Lane
Nathan Lane is an American actor who has been on stage and screen in both comedic and dramatic roles.
Lane made his professional theatre debut in 1978 in an off-Broadway production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. During that time he also briefly appeared as one half of the comedy team of Stack and Lane, until he was cast in the 1982 Broadway revival of Noël Coward's Present Laughter directed by and starring George C. Scott. That led to an extensive career onstage, where he had a long friendship and fruitful collaboration with the playwright Terrence McNally which started in 1989 with the Manhattan Theater Club production of The Lisbon Traviata.
A six-time Tony Award nominee, he has won three times, for Best Actor in a Musical for Pseudolus in Stephen Sondheim's A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and Max Bialystock in Mel Brooks' The Producers, and Best Featured Actor in a Play for Roy Cohn in Tony Kushner's Angels in America. He was also Tony-nominated for Guys and Dolls, The Nance, and The Front Page. Among his 25 Broadway credits are The Man Who Came To Dinner, The Odd Couple, Butley, Waiting for Godot, The Addams Family, It's Only a Play, Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus, and Pictures from Home. Lane has acted in films such as Ironweed, Frankie and Johnny, The Lion King, The Birdcage, Mouse Hunt, Nicholas Nickleby, The Producers, and Beau Is Afraid. He received the Primetime Emmy Award for his role in the Hulu mystery comedy series Only Murders in the Building in 2022. He has been Emmy-nominated eight times for his guest roles in Frasier, Mad About You, Modern Family, The Good Wife and Only Murders in the Building. He has also won two Daytime Emmy Awards. He portrayed F. Lee Bailey in the FX miniseries The People v. O. J. Simpson: American Crime Story and Dominick Dunne in the Netflix anthology series Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story. He has also starred in Penny Dreadful: City of Angels, The Gilded Age, and Mid-Century Modern.
Lane has received numerous accolades including three Tony Awards, seven Drama Desk Awards, a Laurence Olivier Award, three Emmy Awards, and a Screen Actors Guild Award. Lane received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2006 and was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 2008. In 2010, The New York Times hailed Lane as being "the greatest stage entertainer of the decade".
Early life and education
Lane was born Joseph Lane in Jersey City, New Jersey on February 3, 1956. His father Daniel Joseph Lane was a truck driver and an aspiring tenor who died in 1967 from alcoholism when Nathan was eleven. His mother Nora Veronica was a housewife and secretary who suffered from bipolar disorder and died in 2000. Nathan has two older brothers, Daniel Jr. and Robert. Their parents were Catholics and all of their grandparents were Irish immigrants. He was named Joseph after his uncle, a Jesuit priest. Nathan attended Catholic schools in Jersey City, including Jesuit-run St. Peter's Preparatory School, where he was voted Best Actor in 1974, and in 2011 received the Prep Hall of Fame Professional Achievement Award.Career
1975–1990s: Rise to prominence
Accepted to Saint Joseph's University in Philadelphia on a drama scholarship, Joseph Lane was accompanied on what was supposed to be his first day there by his older brother Dan. Discovering that the scholarship would not cover enough of his expenses, he decided to leave, and work for a year to earn some money. His brother said, "I remember him saying to me, 'College is for people who don't know what they want to do.'"Because there already was a Joseph Lane registered with Actors' Equity, he changed his name to Nathan after the character Nathan Detroit from the musical Guys and Dolls. He moved to New York City in 1975 where after a long struggle, his career began to take off, first with some brief success in the world of stand-up comedy with partner Patrick Stack and later with Off-Broadway productions at Second Stage Theatre, the Roundabout Theatre, and the Manhattan Theatre Club. In 1978, he appeared in a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream alongside John Goodman at the Equity Library Theatre. He made his Broadway debut in a 1982 revival of Noël Coward's Present Laughter as Roland Maule with George C. Scott, Kate Burton, Dana Ivey, Bette Henritze, Elizabeth Hubbard, Jim Piddock, and Christine Lahti.
His second Broadway appearance was in the 1983 musical Merlin, starring Chita Rivera and magician Doug Henning. This was followed by Wind in the Willows as Mr. Toad, Some Americans Abroad at Lincoln Center, and the national tour of Neil Simon's Broadway Bound.
Off-Broadway productions in which he appeared, included Love, Measure for Measure directed by Joseph Papp in Central Park, for which he received the St. Clair Bayfield Award, The Common Pursuit, The Film Society, In a Pig's Valise, She Stoops to Conquer, The Merry Wives of Windsor and A Midsummer Night's Dream. He appeared at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in The School for Scandal and John Guare's Moon Over Miami. His association with Stephen Sondheim began in 1989 with a workshop reading of Assassins, where he played Samuel Byck, the would-be murderer of Richard Nixon. Lane also appeared in the television shows Miami Vice and The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd as Bing Shalimar.
In 1991, Lane appeared with George C. Scott again in a revival of Paul Osborne's On Borrowed Time at the Circle in the Square Theatre on Broadway. In 1992, he starred in the hit revival of Guys and Dolls, playing Nathan Detroit, the character who lent him his name, opposite Peter Gallagher and Faith Prince. For this performance, he received his first Tony nomination, as well as Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards. In 1992, he won an Obie Award for Sustained Excellence of Performance. His professional association with his close friend the playwright Terrence McNally, whom he met in 1987, includes roles in The Lisbon Traviata, Bad Habits, Lips Together, Teeth Apart, Love! Valour! Compassion!, Dedication or the Stuff of Dreams, which opened in 2005, The Last Mile on PBS' Great Performances, and the film version of Frankie and Johnny.
The early 1990s began a stretch of successful Broadway shows for Lane. In 1993, he portrayed Sid Caesar-like Max Prince in Neil Simon's Laughter on the 23rd Floor, inspired by Simon's early career writing sketches for Your Show of Shows. In 1996, he starred in the hit revival of Stephen Sondheim's A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. For his performance he won the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical as well as the Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards. In 1998, he appeared Off-Broadway in Jon Robin Baitz's revised 1984 comedy, Mizlansky/Zilinsky or 'Schmucks'.
1994–2009: Breakthrough and acclaim
In 1994, Lane voiced Timon, the meerkat, in Disney's blockbuster animated film The Lion King and reprised the role in its sequel The Lion King II: Simba's Pride and midquel The Lion King 1½. In 1995, Lane was the voice of the meerkat in the early episodes of Timon & Pumbaa. In 1995, he played the Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz in Concert at Lincoln Center to benefit the Children's Defense Fund.The performance was originally broadcast on Turner Network Television.
In 1996 Lane appeared in the film The Birdcage, for which he received his first Golden Globe nomination. The film, an American remake of the classic French farce La Cage aux Folles, was directed by Mike Nichols with a screenplay by Elaine May, and starred Robin Williams, Lane, and Gene Hackman, and went on to be a big success. The Stephen Sondheim song "Little Dream" in The Birdcage was supposedly written especially for him. In 1999, he appeared with Victor Garber in the workshop of the Sondheim musical Wise Guys. His collaboration with Sondheim would continue when Lane revised the original book for and starred in the Broadway debut of the composer's The Frogs at Lincoln Center in 2004.
Lane appeared in the 1997 dark comedy Mouse Hunt, one of the first films to come out of the newly formed DreamWorks Studios, in which he co-starred with British comedian Lee Evans and Christopher Walken. In 1999, he appeared in the Encores! concert revival of Do Re Mi at City Center. That same year he also voiced the role of Snowbell in the family film Stuart Little, opposite his Life With Mikey co-star Michael J. Fox.
He is known for his voice work in two Disney animated series, Teacher's Pet and Timon & Pumbaa, as well as George and Martha on HBO. He received Daytime Emmy Awards for his voice performances in Teacher's Pet and Timon & Pumbaa, as well as a nomination for George and Martha. He hosted Saturday Night Live in 1997, and the Tony Awards. From 1998 to 1999 he starred in the NBC sitcom Encore! Encore! alongside Joan Plowright and Glenne Headly. The New York Times gave a very positive review to the show's debut, writing it possessed the "most accomplished, high-powered cast on television." Although the series got positive reviews it was canceled. He still won the People's Choice Award that year for Favorite New Actor in a Comedy. Lane received Emmy Award nominations for his guest appearances on Frasier and Mad About You in 1995 and 1998, respectively.
File:Mel Brooks.jpg|thumb|right|160px|Lane starred in Mel Brooks' The Producers
Lane starred in the Roundabout revival of The Man Who Came to Dinner as Sheridan Whiteside, with Jean Smart and Harriet Sansom Harris in 2000. Charles Isherwood of Variety liked his performance, "Nathan Lane, an actor who makes virtually every role he plays seem like a role he was born to play, is the splendidly seething, delightfully acerbic center of Jerry Zaks' splashy production of the 1939 comedy". The production was taped and shown on PBS. That same year he starred in Kenneth Branagh's film adaptation of William Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost. He acted in the comedy Isn't She Great opposite Bette Midler, the crime drama Trixie, and voiced a character in the animated science fiction film Titan A.E..
In 2001, he starred as Max Bialystock in the blockbuster musical version of Mel Brooks's The Producers. He acted alongside Matthew Broderick. Chris Jones of Variety wrote "Lane's greatest contribution, though, is this performer's innate sense of pace. He's constantly propelling the show forward and giving all this nonsense a necessary sense of urgency." Ben Brantley of The New York Times praised Lane's performance describing it as his "most delicious performance". He complimented Lane's and Broderick's chemistry adding "Mr. Lane and Mr. Broderick, have the most dynamic stage chemistry since Natasha Richardson met Liam Neeson in Anna Christie. The role earned him his second Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical as well as Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards.
The next year he reprised his role as Snowbell in Stuart Little 2. He then appeared as Vincent Crummles in a film adaptation of Nicholas Nickleby and the cast received the Ensemble Acting award from the National Board of Review. In 2003 he starred Off-Broadway in Trumbo: Red, White, and Blacklisted. In 2004, Lane revised the libretto and portrayed Dionysus in the revival of Stephen Sondheim's musical The Frogs which opened at the Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center on Broadway. That same year he replaced Richard Dreyfuss in The Producers in the West End. Dreyfuss was let go just a week before the show's first preview at London's Theatre Royal Drury Lane. Lane went on to win the Olivier Award as Best Actor in a Musical. His performance in the film version, opposite Broadway co-star Matthew Broderick as Leo Bloom, earned him his second nomination for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy.
In 2005, Lane rejoined Broderick for a successful limited run of The Odd Couple. In 2006, he took on a primarily dramatic role in a revival of Simon Gray's Butley, having played the role to great success at The Huntington Theater Company in Boston in 2003. He and Broderick received adjacent stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in a joint ceremony on January 9, 2006, and were immortalized in wax as Max and Leo at Madame Tussauds Museum in New York City on January 16, 2009. In 2008, he played the President of the United States in the David Mamet political satire, November, directed by Joe Mantello. This was followed by the critically acclaimed 2009 revival of Waiting for Godot in which he played Estragon opposite Bill Irwin's Vladimir. He was a 2008 American Theatre Hall of Fame inductee. In the 2000s Lane also made guest appearances on Sex and the City, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Absolutely Fabulous, and 30 Rock.