Nathan Lane (born Joseph Lane; February 3, 1956) is an American actor. In a career spanning over 40 years he has been seen on stage and screen in roles both comedic and dramatic. Lane has received numerous awards including three Tony Awards, six Drama Desk Awards, an Olivier Award, two Obie Awards, a Primetime Emmy Award, two Daytime Emmy Awards, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and a People's Choice Award. In 2006, Lane received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 2008. In 2010, The New York Times hailed Lane as "the greatest stage entertainer of the decade".

Lane came to New York in the late seventies, acting off and off-off Broadway, including a brief stint in the world of stand-up comedy 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. This 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 appeared on Broadway in 24 productions playing a variety of roles, including Nathan Detroit in Guys and Dolls (1992), Max Prince in Neil Simon's Laughter on the 23rd Floor (1994), Pseudolus in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1996), Sheridan Whiteside in The Man Who Came to Dinner (2000), Max Bialystock in Mel Brooks' The Producers (2001), Oscar Madison in Neil Simon's The Odd Couple (2005), Ben Butley in Simon Gray's Butley (2006), Estragon in Waiting For Godot (2009), Gomez Addams in The Addams Family (2010), Chauncey Miles in The Nance (2013), Walter Burns in The Front Page (2016), Roy Cohn in Tony Kushner's Angels in America (2018) and Hickey in The Iceman Cometh (2015) at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

He has also worked extensively in film and television, making his debut in the 1987 Héctor Babenco film Ironweed with Meryl Streep and Jack Nicholson. He had supporting roles in films like Frankie and Johnny (1991) with Michelle Pfeiffer and Al Pacino and Life With Mikey (1992) with Michael J. Fox. In 1994 he created the role of Timon, the wise-cracking meerkat, in the Disney animated film The Lion King and then in 1996 Mike Nichols cast him opposite Robin Williams in his American remake of La Cage Aux Folles The Birdcage. In television, he has had recurring roles on Modern Family as Pepper Saltzman, The Good Wife as Clarke Hayden, The People v. O. J. Simpson: American Crime Story as F. Lee Bailey, Penny Dreadful: City of Angels as Lewis Michener, The Gilded Age as Ward McAllister, and Only Murders in the Building as Teddy Dimas, the latter of which earned him his first Primetime Emmy Award after a record-breaking seven nominations in the guest actor category.