Word: lanes
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Luckily, it's the minority side. The Mike Nichols comedy--which earned $18.3 million at the box office its first weekend, the best opening record of any film this year--portrays a gay couple whose old-fashioned family values even Bob Dole conservatives could love. And Lane's funny, flouncy yet surprisingly restrained performance--topped by a bravura drag bit as a Barbara Bush-style matron--is a big reason...
...Lane's transition from the hothouse world of New York City theater to multiplexes across America is both unusual and heartening. Onstage, he has won plaudits for playing a series of extravagant gay characters in such plays as Terrence McNally's The Lisbon Traviata and Love! Valour! Compassion! Yet Lane has also been hailed for such all-American straight roles as Nathan Detroit in the 1992 revival of Guys and Dolls, and his movie parts have ranged from Michael J. Fox's brother in Life with Mikey to the voice of the Hakuna Matata-singing meerkat in The Lion King...
...actor who impressed director Mike Nichols, who came backstage after watching Lane play a Sid Caesar-like TV star in Neil Simon's Laughter on the 23rd Floor. On the spot, he offered Lane the role of Albert in a remake of the French comedy La Cage aux Folles--alongside Robin Williams, in the more sober role of Armand. Lane initially had to turn Nichols down because of a scheduling conflict with his next big Broadway show, a revival of the musical A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. But Nichols kept calling, and the show...
...Lane was a match for his wildly inventive co-star. "He'd try things just as outrageous as I would," says Williams. "Hard to find someone who does that." Nichols would typically let the pair run loose with improvisations in at least one take per scene. Lane's own favorite came when Albert learns that Armand doesn't want him around to meet the uptight parents of the girl Armand's son wants to marry. Lane went high-flying hysterical, screaming to onlookers at a sidewalk cafe ("I'm a homeless person!"), then fainting dead away. "All the extras...
Sipping tea in his Broadway dressing room last week, Lane, 40, was subdued and a little weary, his voice only occasionally rising to his patented pitch of whiny sarcasm. (Asked about working in the shadow of original Forum star Zero Mostel, he replies with a tart "Who?") Lane grew up in a working-class Irish-American family in Jersey City, New Jersey, where he regularly starred in the plays at St. Peter's Prep. In New York he started building his theater resume, appearing in flops (the Doug Henning musical Merlin) and a few prestige successes (a revival of Noel...