Nathan Lane

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American actor, a Hollywood, television and Broadway star known for his outrageous scene-stealing comedy roles. The youngest of three boys, Nathan Lane was born Joseph Lane in 1956 in Jersey City. His mother worked as a secretary and his father was a truck driver and aspiring tenor singer who died of alcoholism when Lane was 11. Lane fell in love with acting in the 6th grade after a role in "Around the World in 80 Days" secured his first laugh from an audience. After graduating in 1974, he won a scholarship to a university in Philadelphia, but had to return to Jersey City and take a job at the county clerk's office because the scholarship didn't provide enough money to live on. He also worked as a singing messenger and stand-up comedian. At 22, he changed his stage name to Nathan so he could join the Actors Guild inasmuch as the name Joseph Lane was already taken. He chose this moniker because his favorite character was Nathan Detroit from the Broadway classic, "Guys and Dolls" (and coincidentally, a character he would later play to acclaim in the 1992 Broadway version of the play). Lane made his film debut in 1987's "Ironweed," and he spent the rest of the 1980s and early 1990s playing secondary film roles as he struggled with alcoholism, beginning to sober up in 1993. In addition to his celebrated performance in "Guys and Dolls," for which he won a Tony nomination, he appeared in a number of plays including "The Lisbon Traviata" in which he played an opera queen, and "Love! Valour! Compassion!" 1994 in which he starred as Buzz, an HIV-positive musical aficionado. The latter role earned him Obie and Drama Desk Awards. In 1994 he also did the voice of Timon, a hyperactive meerkat in Disney's animated "The Lion King," reprising the role for the movie's 1998 sequel. In between, his profile increased when he co-starred as Robin Williams' hysterically-flamboyant, limp-wristed, cross-dressing lover in "The Birdcage," 1996, a remake of "La Cage aux Folles." Few were surprised when Lane came out publicly as gay via a cover story in "The Advocate" magazine in February 1999, quipping, "I'm single, I'm 40, and I love musical theater -- you do the math." He added about his sexuality, "It's never been something I kept secret." Lane moved into a TV sitcom, "Encore! Encore!," in 1998 but it had no more than a short run. After six months of starring in Broadway's biggest hit, "The Producers," Tony-winning Lane, 45, suffered from a polyp on his left vocal cord that forced him to cancel out of all of the week's performances on 1 November 2001. Lane and Matthew Broderick completed their run in the smash Mel Brooks musical "The Producers" on 17 March 2002, closing with a record 12 Tony awards. The show continued with other actors playing the lead roles. His performance in the 2005 film version, opposite Broadway co-star, Matthew Broderick as Leo Bloom, earned him his second Golden Globe nomination for Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy. In 2005, Lane rejoined Broderick for a successful limited run of "The Odd Couple." In autumn 2014, he appeared in an all-star ensemble of Terrence McNally's revised and updated "It's Only a Play," with F. Murray Abraham, Matthew Broderick, Stockard Channing, Rupert Grint, Megan Mullally, and Micah Stock. The show became one of the biggest hits of the season. On 17 November 2015, Lane married his long-time partner, theatre producer and writer Devlin Elliott. Link to Wikipedia biography