Who Is Nathan Lane? A Brief Introduction to the Acting Legend:
American stage, film, and television actor Nathan Lane was born in Jersey City, New Jersey, on February 3, 1956. He is most recognized for his work in musical comedy, particularly for his iconic role in the Broadway version of The Producers.
When Nathan Lane participated in his high school production of No, No, Nanette, he first realized he had a gift for musical comedy. He made the decision to work in theater after graduating. He portrayed Nathan Detroit in a dinner-theater version of Guys and Dolls, one of his early productions. He decided to use the first name of the character he had played, Nathan, as his professional name after learning that Actors’ Equity already had a member named Joe Lane.
Nathan Lane relocated to New York City in the late 1970s. He performed in a number of Off-Broadway shows there and took on a variety of odd jobs to make ends meet. He formed a comedic act with fellow actor Patrick Stack during this period. Before Lane eventually moved back to New York, the pair—known as Stark and Lane—performed for over two years in Los Angeles nightclubs and as the opening act at concerts.
In 1982, Nathan Lane starred in the short-lived sitcom One of the Boys on television. Shortly after, she was featured in Noël Coward’s Present Laughter on Broadway. Roles in Love and She Stoops to Conquer (both in 1984) came next. Lane made his feature film debut in Ironweed in 1987. His work in Terrence McNally’s Lips Together, Teeth Apart (1991) and the movie Frankie and Johnny (1991) were both highly praised by critics, as was his Off-Broadway performance in The Lisbon Traviata (1989).
He played the same part in Guys and Dolls again, this time on Broadway, in 1992. He garnered excellent acclaim for his stage performance in Neil Simon’s comedy Laughter on the 23rd Floor the following year.
By providing the voice of Timon the meerkat in the animated film The Lion King (1994), giving a stirring performance in McNally’s play Love! Valour! Compassion! (1994), and portraying the drag queen Albert alongside Robin Williams in The Birdcage (1996), Lane attracted even larger audiences.
After that, he won his first Tony Award for his portrayal as Pseudolus in the Broadway production of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1996). Nathan lane provided voice acting for characters in the animated television series George and Martha from 1999 to 2000. In 2000, he also made stage appearances in Laughter on the 23rd Floor and The Man Who Came to Dinner, as well as on television.
Shortly after Matthew Shepard was brutally murdered in 1999, Nathan Lane came out as gay in public. This led to fresh calls for federal hate crime legislation to be expanded in order to protect LGBTQ+ victims. “I had already come out on a personal level, and once I was a so-called public figure, why not come out publicly if it could help others in the struggle,” Lane said after describing Shepard’s passing as “an incredibly sobering moment” for him. So I did, and I’m happy that I did. Lane’s exceptional work combating homophobia earned him the GLAAD Vito Russo Award in 2002.
In 2001, Nathan Lane received fresh praise for his hilarious portrayal of con guy Max Bialystock in Mel Brooks’s popular Broadway musical comedy The Producers, which broke box office records and won Lane a Tony Award. The play also starred Matthew Broderick. He also made an appearance in the movie version from 2005. After a year, Lane left the Broadway show, but he eventually returned for runs with Broderick in 2003–04. Dedication or The Stuff of Dreams (2005), Butley (2003, 2006–07), and Trumbo (2003) were among his later theatrical productions.
Nathan Lane starred in a reimagining of Simon’s The Odd Couple from 2005 to 2006. He played a sitting U.S. president on the eve of an election in David Mamet’s 2008 film November. Lane played Estragon in a popular Broadway production of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot the following year. He starred in the musical The Addams Family from 2010 to 2011. Lane portrayed Theodore Hickman in a revival of Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre the following year; in 2015, the show moved to New York.
In The Nance (2013), Nathan Lane made a comeback to Broadway as a closeted gay man in the 1930s who mocks homosexuality during a burlesque performance. An modified version of Terrence McNally’s It’s Only a Play, which provided an intimate glimpse into the world of Broadway theater, brought Lane and Broderick back together in 2014–15. Then, in the 2016–17 revival of Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur’s The Front Page, he played a combative newspaper editor.
Later, in a revival of Tony Kushner’s play Angels in America, which is about the AIDS pandemic, Lane was cast as the contentious lawyer Roy Cohn. Before returning to Broadway in 2018, he performed the part for the first time in London in 2017. Lane received his third Tony Award for his performance in the Broadway show. He starred in the dark comedy Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus in 2019, which was based on the events of William Shakespeare’s first play.
Lane’s other 21st-century film credits include Mirror Mirror (2012), a humorous adaptation of the Snow White tale, and The Nutcracker in 3D (2010), which is based on the well-known ballet by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. Despite his brief appearances in two sitcoms (1998–1999 and 2003), Lane was successful in recurring television parts in the 2010s, such as Modern Family and The Good Wife. In The People v. O. J. Simpson: American Crime Story (2016), which depicted the 1994 murder trial of former professional football player O. J. Simpson, he played defense lawyer F. Lee Bailey.
Later, in the noir horror series Penny Dreadful: City of Angels (2020), which takes place in Los Angeles in 1938, Lane played a detective who looked into a family murder. He later played recurrent parts in The Gilded Age (2022–) and Only Murders in the Building (2021–).
At the first Critics Choice Association Celebration of LGBTQ+ Cinema and Television in 2024, Nathan Lane received the Career Achievement Award in recognition of his enduring influence on theater, film, and television.