Nathan Lane

Nathan Lane (born Joseph Lane; February 3, 1956) is an American actor. Since 1975, he has been on stage and screen in both comedic and dramatic roles. He 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".

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 (1996) and Max Bialystock in Mel Brooks' The Producers (2001), and Best Featured Actor in a Play for Roy Cohn in Tony Kushner's Angels in America (2018). His other Tony-nominated roles were Nathan Detroit in Guys and Dolls (1992), Chauncey Miles in The Nance (2013), and Walter Burns in The Front Page (2016). Among his 25 Broadway credits are The Man Who Came To Dinner (2000), The Odd Couple (2005), Butley (2006), Waiting for Godot (2009), The Addams Family (2010), It's Only a Play (2014), Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus (2019), and Pictures from Home (2023).

Lane has acted in films such as Ironweed (1987), Frankie and Johnny (1991), The Lion King (1994), The Birdcage (1996), Mouse Hunt (1997), Nicholas Nickleby (2002), The Producers (2005), and Beau Is Afraid (2023). 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 (2016) and Dominick Dunne in the Netflix anthology series Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story (2024). He has also starred in Penny Dreadful: City of Angels (2020), The Gilded Age (2022–present), and Mid-Century Modern (2025).

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 (née Finnerty) 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.

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 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.^{[citation needed]} He made his Broadway debut in a 1982 revival of Noël Coward's Present Laughter as Roland Maule (Drama Desk nomination) 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.