Nathan Lane (born Joseph Lane; February 3, 1956) is an American actor. In a career spanning over 40 years he has been seen on stage and screen in roles both comedic and dramatic. Lane has received numerous awards including three Tony Awards, an Olivier Award, three Emmy Awards, and a Screen Actors Guild Award. In 2006, Lane received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 2008. In 2010, The New York Times hailed Lane as "the greatest stage entertainer of the decade".
Lane made his professional theatre debut in 1978 in an off-Broadway production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. During this 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. This 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, Lane has won three times portraying Pseudolus in Stephen Sondheim's A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1996), Max Bialystock in Mel Brooks' The Producers (2001), and Roy Cohn in Tony Kushner's Angels in America (2018). His other Tony-nominated roles were for Guys and Dolls (1992), The Nance (2013), and The Front Page (2016).
He made his film debut in Ironweed (1987), and has starred in over 35 films, including The Birdcage (1996), Mouse Hunt (1997), and The Producers (2005). He also voiced the wise-cracking meerkat, Timon in The Lion King (1994), and Snowbell the cat in Stuart Little. He received the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series for the Hulu series Only Murders in the Building in 2022 after a record-breaking seven nominations in the guest actor category. His Emmy-nominated roles also include Frasier, Mad About You, Modern Family, and The Good Wife. Other television credits include The People v. O. J. Simpson: American Crime Story (2016), Penny Dreadful: City of Angels (2020), and The Gilded Age (2022).
Early life
Nathan 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 Lane was eleven. His mother, Nora Veronica (Finnerty), was a housewife and secretary who suffered from bipolar disorder and died in 2000. He has two older brothers, Daniel Jr. and Robert. Lane's parents were Catholics, and all of his grandparents were Irish immigrants. He was named after his uncle, a Jesuit priest. Lane attended Catholic schools in Jersey City, including Jesuit-run St. Peter's Preparatory School, where he was voted Best Actor in 1974, and years later received the 2011 Prep Hall of Fame Professional Achievement Award.
