Let Him Entertain You

Actor Nathan Lane is sitting in a fancy New York theater district restaurant, reminiscing about the good old days during the early 1980s when he was a member of a comedy team called Stack and Lane.

“I remember we played the Comedy Store in Westwood,” he says. “The room was always very joke-oriented. We had a little opening thing, a couple of jokes, and then we would say, ‘Now we take you to a bar somewhere in Manhattan.’ They didn’t want to go to a bar in Manhattan. It just didn’t fit in with the tempo of the room. We were in the middle of a sketch and this fellow came up on stage and said, ‘If you two don’t stop this, I’m going to kill you.’ ”

Here Lane laughs incredulously. “I said, ‘What do you think, folks, shall we take a vote? How many of you want to kill us?’ ”

That’s a tough crowd. Things have changed since then. Lane, 41, is now well known as the voice of wisecracking Timon the meerkat in Disney’s animated “The Lion King” and as the hilariously fey Albert in last year’s hit film “The Birdcage.” He’s also been a regular in Terrence McNally’s plays (“The Lisbon Traviata,” “Lips Together, Teeth Apart,” “Love! Valour! Compassion!”) and appeared to acclaim in Broadway revivals of “Guys and Dolls” and “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.”

This Christmas, he’ll be featured with Lee Evans in DreamWorks’ “Mousehunt,” playing a chef with a mouse problem. “It’s sort of Laurel and Hardy meets Terry Gilliam meets ‘It’s a Mad, Mad World,’ ” he says. “I guess in Hollywood they would describe it as ‘Home Alone’ with a mouse.”

Today, Lane has just finished doing a photo shoot tied in with the movie for Bon Apetit (hence a snazzy green suit and hair parted as if by a razor). Tonight, he will be appearing on David Letterman’s show--not to promote anything but because they like him. It’s easy to like him. He’s eager, though not overeager, to please. He understands what is expected of him.

“I’m now established as someone who goes on and is funny with Letterman,” he says wryly. “So now I’m stuck with that. I can’t go on and be introspective. I can’t discuss the meaning of life. They want me to come and carry on. So I try to do that.”

To some degree Lane can’t help doing that. When asked if he still doesn’t drive, he says, “No. Which out there [in Los Angeles] you might as well say I’m a child molester, because that’s the look they give you. What do you mean, you don’t drive? Part of some Communist plot.”

Lane’s heroes are comedians too. Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello, Jackie Gleason, Phil Silvers, Woody Allen, Nichols and May, George Carlin, Robert Klein, Alan King, Jonathan Winters. Nevertheless, he describes himself when he started out as “a struggling New York actor.” (Originally from Jersey City, N.J., he was christened Joe Lane but changed to it to Nathan after Nathan Detroit in “Guys and Dolls.”)

“A lot of people suggested I do stand-up comedy, and I thought, ‘I don’t think I could do that,’ ” Lane says. “I used to deliver singing telegrams to make ends meet, and I delivered one at an Italian wedding and then I started to kid around. The people said, ‘Keep talking,’ so I told them about my life as a struggling actor and they laughed and threw money. So I thought maybe there’s something to this.”

Lane tried a few solo outings before joining Patrick Stack to do the sort of sketch material that wowed audiences at the Comedy Store. They moved to L.A. and appeared in clubs and on Merv Griffin’s and Mike Douglas’ talk shows and opened for Eddie Rabbitt.

Lane has mixed feelings about that experience. “It was emotionally draining staying up till all hours and then waiting to go on,” he says. “And then if you die, there’s nothing worse. What was great about it was how freeing it was because it also tapped into writing and directing talents. And you had your own product.”

Deciding he could struggle just as well in New York, Lane left the act and returned East, where he did the brief (13 episodes) 1982 television series “One of the Boys” with Mickey Rooney and Dana Carvey. And he did theater. His first big break was Terrence McNally’s “The Lisbon Traviata” (1989), playing a gay Maria Callas obsessive. This led to more McNally collaborations and higher-profile projects outside this collaboration--in other words, to success.

It reached its zenith when “The Birdcage” came out while he was appearing in “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.”

What was that like? “A big old multiple orgasm,” Lane says. “You have to cherish those moments.”

This new fame has had a downside. Suddenly, he became a commodity, not just a person. He says he doesn’t mind the attention and that most people are complimentary, but once in a while he’ll get a letter “where they weren’t so crazy about ‘The Birdcage’ and it’s written in crayon and misspelled. It’s a little scary. But it’s part of what comes with this territory and it’s an adjustment.”

Lane has also undergone increased scrutiny by the press. He says he “got beaten up” by the gay community because the gay characters in “The Birdcage” were considered “politically incorrect” (ie., pre-AIDS, pre-ACT-UP stereotypes).

He had a highly publicized spat with McNally when he wouldn’t appear in the movie version of “Love! Valour! Compassion!” Accusations flew that Lane didn’t want to do another gay role, although he maintains that he bowed out because of scheduling conflicts. At any rate, he says it was blown out of proportion by the press.

“I had gone through a similar thing before with him,” he says of McNally. “I wasn’t famous enough for them to care. He has intense relationships. He had a similar one I think with Jimmy Coco, a slightly love-hate relationship.”

They have since patched things up, as Lane puts it, and they’re even talking about doing a film version of “Lips Together, Teeth Apart.” But in some ways, the central issue hasn’t gone away. Lane feels confined by the roles he’s played, and it’s no coincidence that his part in “Lips Together” is a straight one.

“I think people are under the impression that if you’ve done a movie like ‘The Birdcage’ and it’s made over $100 million and you’ve gotten some praise for it, then suddenly all of Hollywood is at your feet, which really isn’t the case unless you’re 22 and you look like Brad Pitt,” he says.

“I had a meeting with a studio executive who said, ‘Gee, we’re not doing any broad comedies or anything with gay characters in them.’ And I thought, ‘Is that all you think I can do?’ Whether you like it or not, you can get stuck. It’ll be interesting to see what will happen with Rupert Everett [the gay actor in “My Best Friend’s Wedding”].

“You try to keep them guessing. For the time being, I think I’m going to do a lot of comedy in film and then hopefully something will come along. Maybe it’ll be a smaller role in an interesting film where it’s a little more serious.”

Lane is not ruling out theater. Or television (he has a standing offer to work on a new series with the makers of “Frasier,” on which he’s guest-starred).

Or the Hollywood Bowl. He’s appearing there Friday and Saturday as a guest of composer Marvin Hamlisch, who will be conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic in a program of movie- and theater-related music. Lane will be singing a few chestnuts such as Cole Porter’s “Please Don’t Monkey With Broadway.”

“Barbra wasn’t available,” Lane says, “so he called me.”

BE THERE

Marvin Hamlisch and Nathan Lane with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra at the Hollywood Bowl, 2301 N. Highland Ave., Friday and Saturday, 8:30 p.m. $3-$95. Some sections sold out. (213) 850-2000.