1956-02-03 · Jersey City, New Jersey, U.S. · Male
Nathan Lane (born Joseph Lane; February 3, 1956) is an American actor. Known for his versatile roles on stage and screen, 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 Actor Award. Lane was awarded 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.
He has won three Tony Awards: 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). He was also Tony-nominated for Guys and Dolls (1992), The Nance (2013), The Front Page (2016), and Death of a Salesman (2026). Among his 25 Broadway credits are The Man Who Came To Dinner (2000), The Frogs (2004), The Odd Couple (2005), Butley (2006), November (2008), 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 The Lion King (1994), The Birdcage (1996), Mouse Hunt (1997), The Producers (2005), and Beau Is Afraid (2023). He received the Primetime Emmy Award for his role in the Hulu series Only Murders in the Building in 2022. He has received eight Emmy nominations for his guest roles in Frasier, Mad About You, Modern Family, The Good Wife and Only Murders. He has also received two Daytime Emmy Awards as well. 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 (2022–2025), and Mid-Century Modern (2025).
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 11. 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.
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 (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.
Off-Broadway productions in which he appeared, include Love (the musical version of Murray Schisgal's Luv), 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 (Drama Desk and Lucille Lortel Awards, and Outer Critics Circle nomination), Bad Habits, Lips Together, Teeth Apart, Love! Valour! Compassion! (Obie, Drama Desk, and Outer Critics Circle Awards), Dedication or the Stuff of Dreams, which opened in 2005 (Drama Desk nomination), 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 (TNT).
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…