Lane was born Joseph Lane in Jersey City, New Jersey on February 3, 1956. His father Daniel Joseph Lane was a truck driver and an aspiring tenor who died in 1967 from alcoholism when Lane was eleven. His mother Nor… See more

Accepted to Saint Joseph's University in Philadelphia on a drama scholarship, Lane was accompanied on what was supposed to be his first day there by his older brother Dan. Discovering that the scholarship would not c… See more

Lane says that when he told his mother at age 21 that he was gay, she said, "I'd rather you were dead," to which he replied, "I knew you'd understand." He then joked that "Once I got her head out of the oven, everything … See more