TIME Magazine April 8, 1996 Volume 147, No. 15 Return to Contents page NATHAN LANEUNCAGED His brilliant drag turn in the Birdcage has made Lane a true movie star. But will we ever look at Barbara Bush the same? RICHARD ZOGLIN For years he's been a local hero on Broadway, but Nathan Lane is just now learning what it's like to be a real star. Most Hollywood vets know the drill: the rash of press interviews, the upsurge in people stopping you on the street to sing your praises . But Lane, who plays the flamboyantly effeminate half of a gay couple in The Birdcage, has to contend with something other movie stars don't. Stopped in Manhattan traffic in a taxi one day last week, he noticed a rough-looking van driver staring down at him. The fellow turned to his friend, then leaned out the window and yelled, "Hey, faggot!" Lane froze. "It was really a horrible moment," he says. "I just sat there and thought, well, here's the flip side." Luckily, it's the minority side. The Mike Nichols comedywhich earned $18.3 million at the box office its first weekend, the best opening record of any film this yearportrays a gay couple whose old-fashioned family values even Bob Dole conservatives could love. And Lane's funny, flouncy yet surprisingly restrained performancetopped by a bravura drag bit as a Barbara Bush-style matronis a big reason why. 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 Lis bon 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. Lane has little interest in being treated as a standard bearer for gay roles in movies. "I'm just an actor," he says. "I'm not a politician." | |
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