Therapy at the theater

Nathan Lane is an accomplished actor with a loyal following, two Tony Awards, a current hit on Broadway and the movie version of his last musical opening today as a huge Hollywood film.

Joey Lane is a short, pudgy, insecure kid from Jersey City who grew up too fast in an unhappy family, went to strict Catholic schools, and found some brief escape from painful reality only by going to the theater. Shy and eager to please, he’s prone to bad moods and lacerating self-criticism.

The two Lanes intersect in the same person. But they take turns seizing the right of way.

During a long junket to publicize his new film, “The Producers,” it’s clearly Nathan who’s in charge when the 49-year-old star arrives for an early-morning press conference wearing a neat dark suit and a wince.

One hapless reporter’s awkward question about his supposedly “loud” persona is quickly slapped down. (“You have to be loud,” Lane snaps. “It’s the theater.”) Other queries are answered with one-liners and insults.

Late in the afternoon, however, sitting down in his hotel room for a private interview, Joey is back. The jokes are gone, replaced by a quiet honesty and a sort of wounded wonder – about his place in Hollywood, about his pigeonholing as a performer, about how he’ll be remembered, if at all.

No one who has worked with him shares Lane’s doubt about his abilities.

“He is very bright,” says an admiring Susan Stroman, who directed him in “The Producers” both on Broadway and in the new film.

“He’s very witty, his mind is always turning over,” she says. “He’s not afraid of falling. He’s not afraid of making mistakes.”

Certainly that’s the Nathan Lane who won a Tony for “The Producers” in 2001, to add to the one for 1996’s “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.”

Undeniably, though, that’s also the public Nathan Lane persona that Joey Lane has constructed over the years – one no more real than Max Bialystock or Oscar Madison.

Those who know Lane advise against trying to get behind the facade. Yet at the end of a busy day, slowly, Joey Lane emerges, too.

“I mean, you know, we all have our family issues,” he says in his hotel room. “You know, I had a, you know – well, it was difficult growing up. My father died of alcoholism when I was 11. My mother was a manic-depressive and wasn’t diagnosed as such until five years into it. …

“It was painful at times. To see these people you loved, suffering, and not being able to take care of you – and you having to take care of them – that’s hard. That’s very difficult, and it makes you grow up quickly.”

The only thing that made it any easier was the theater, and the plays an older brother started taking him to when he was 10. Instead of children’s plays, though, the Lane boys went to see cutting-edge provocations like “Hair” and “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.”

“There was a feeling that, you know, whatever this is, this is the greatest thing in the world,” Lane says. “A whole group of people sitting in the dark, and listening to someone telling a story? It didn’t seem as if there could be anything better.

“And somehow I felt I could do that. I didn’t know how, but I felt I could.”

Lane began doing plays at Sacred Heart Grammar School, and was voted best actor at St. Peter’s Prep in 1974. He jumped into an acting career after graduation, going after any job that came along.

The young actor began to leave Joseph Lane behind. Then he found a way to get rid of him forever, literally.

“When I joined Actors Equity there was already a Joe Lane, so they said ‘You have to change your name,’ ” he recalls. “I had played Nathan Detroit in a dinner theater ‘Guys and Dolls’ … and I liked the character and the name, so that was it. …

“It was going to be either that or Ben, because I had liked playing Benjamin Franklin in ‘1776.’ “

After a string of off-Broadway shows and commercials, Lane made his movie debut in “Ironweed” in 1987. He had TV roles on “Miami Vice,” “Frasier” and “The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd.” For years, his biggest credit was a NyQuil commercial.

“I never thought of giving up, but it takes an awful lot to hang in there,” he says. “I can see why people give up, or suddenly they’re hosting a game show: ‘Hey, you know, I gotta make a living.’ “

Lane made his Broadway debut in 1983 in “Present Laughter,” and would go on to win plaudits in “Guys and Dolls” in 1992, and Terrence McNally’s “Love! Valour! Compassion!” in 1995.

Then, in 1996, Steve Martin dropped out of plans to do “The Birdcage,” the Hollywood version of “La Cage Aux Folles.” Robin Williams, who had been cast as the drag queen, decided he’d actually rather play Martin’s part instead.

And so director Mike Nichols asked Lane to slip into the role, and the size 10 pumps.

The movie, a sizable hit, finally got Lane noticed outside the East Coast theater world. But it wasn’t quite the notice he had hoped for.

“At the time, everybody thought, ‘Oh, (“Birdcage”) is such a big success, this will change things,’ ” he says. “People still assume a lot of opportunities came my way then. But they really didn’t.

“I wish it had been different, but I don’t think they knew what to do with me. … I did a couple of things. I made some money. And then I came back to New York, and went into the workshop of a Sondheim musical.”

He shrugs.

“Which is OK, you know, obviously,” he says. “I don’t feel heartbroken or unhappy in what I’ve done, I don’t think of the theater as a steppingstone to movie stardom. I have no complaints.

“It would have been nice to do some interesting things in the movies. I would love to have that kind of career where you could just go off and do an interesting supporting role. But it just didn’t work out.”

Instead, Lane’s movie niche turned into voicing cartoon animals – Timon the meerkat in “The Lion King,” Snowbell the house cat in “Stuart Little,” Spot the runaway dog in “Teacher’s Pet.”

“Sometimes people will come up, and they’re talking about something as if it’s the greatest thing I’ve ever done,” he says, looking pained. “And it’s a little disheartening. …

“I mean, I’m glad people liked them. I enjoyed doing them. But you know, it’s always frightening when some guy is telling you that and you think, ‘That’s what I’m going to be remembered for?’ “

What has worked out recently is an accidental partnership with perennial straight man Matthew Broderick. The two actors knew each other casually, and talked a bit at the movie premiere of “The Lion King,” for which they’d both done voices.

Then they were both cast in “The Producers.”

“It’s just one of those things that’s just luck, really. You hit if off with someone and there’s this so-called chemistry,” Lane says. “It’s just a mutual respect and admiration and a similar sense of humor.”

The announcement of their reteaming for “The Odd Couple” brought a $21 million advance sale, “unprecedented for a straight play,” Lane brags. The opening, however, brought only mixed notices from critics, with some carping that the two actors were crassly cashing in.

Lane admits he’s eager to do a serious play after “The Odd Couple.” He worries a string of comic hits will overshadow the fact that he’s “not just a performer, but an actor.”

“Theater was always the escape for me,” he says. “Comedy was just the thing that came most naturally. But as you get older, you want to do other things. …

“I just can’t keep playing the same sort of part – although some people don’t want it, and some people appreciate it and some people don’t even acknowledge it.”