Nathan Lane

Nathan Lane (born Joseph Lane; February 3, 1956) is an American actor and writer. In a career spanning over 40 years he has been seen on stage and screen in roles both comedic and dramatic. In 2010, The New York Times hailed Lane as "the greatest stage entertainer of the decade". Lane came to New York in the late seventies and appeared both off and off-off Broadway, as well as spending a short period in the world of stand-up comedy as one half of the comedy team Stack and Lane, until 1982 when he made his Broadway debut as Roland Maule in a revival of Noël Coward's Present Laughter directed by and starring George C. Scott. For this role he received his very first Drama Desk Award nomination. Over the next four decades he would continue working in NY theatre, both on and off Broadway, amassing an impressive 23 Broadway credits and establishing relationships with The Roundabout Theater, Second Stage Theater, Lincoln Center Theater and The Manhattan Theater Club, most memorably in the plays of the late great Terrence McNally. In 1996 he won his first Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical for the hit revival of A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum directed by frequent collaborator Jerry Zaks, who had cast him as Nathan Detroit in his much loved 1992 revival of Guys and Dolls which gave Lane his first Tony Award nomination and made him a star. In 1997 Mel Brooks had told him he was the only actor in the world who could play Max Bialystock in the musical version of his beloved cult film, The Producers, and in 2001 Lane played Max and won his second Tony Award, the Drama Desk Award, the Outer Critics Circle Award and the Olivier Award in London. He won his third Tony Award for his electric performance as Roy Cohn in the 2018 revival of Tony Kushner's masterpiece Angels in America. Lane made his feature film debut in Héctor Babenco's Ironweed (1987) and played several supporting roles in films such as Frankie and Johnny (1991), and Life With Mikey (1993) until the legendary Mike Nichols' gave him his big break in the American remake of La Cage Aux Folles, The Birdcage (1996) for which he earned the Screen Actors Guild Award, a Golden Globe Award nomination, and the American Comedy Award. The following year he starred in Mouse Hunt (1997) for Dreamworks and later reprised his role in the 2005 film version of The Producers for which he received his second Golden Globe Award nomination.. His voice work includes The Lion King (1994) as Timon the meerkat and Stuart Little (1999) as Snowbell. He has had recurring roles on television in Modern Family as Pepper Salesman, The Good Wife as Clarke Hayden, The People v. O. J. Simpson: American Crime Story as F. Lee Bailey, Only Murders in the Building as Teddy Dimas, The Gilded Age as Ward McAllister and was a series regular in Showtime's Penny Dreadful: City of Angels as Detective Lewis Michener. Lane has received six Tony Award nominations and has won three times. He has also won six Drama Desk Awards, six Outer Critics Circle awards, two Obies, the Lucille Lortel Award and the Olivier Award. He has also received two Golden Globe nominations, six Primetime Emmy nominations, a Screen Actors Guild Award, two Daytime Emmy Awards, a National Board of Review Award and a People's Choice 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.

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