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Lainie Kazan

Lainie Kazan
Lainie Kazan
Born: May 15, 1940 in Brooklyn, New York
Occupation: Actor
Active: '80s-2000s
Major Genres: Comedy, Drama
Career Highlights: The Cemetery Club, 29th Street, Beaches
First Major Screen Credit: Dayton's Devils (1968)
21 Videos for Lainie Kazan
You Don't Mess With the Zohan (2008) The Big Hit (1998) Rude Awakening (1989)
Bratz (2007) Allie & Me (1997) Out of the Dark (1988)
Gigli (2003) Love Is All There Is (1996) Harry and the Hendersons (1987)
Adam Sandler's Eight Crazy Nights (2002) 29th Street (1992) The Delta Force (1986)
My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002) Honeymoon in Vegas (1992) Lust in the Dust (1984)
What's Cooking? (2000) I Don't Buy Kisses Anymore (1992) Obsessive Love (1984)
Daddy Who? (1999) Eternity (1990) My Favorite Year (1982)
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Biography:

Hofstra-educated singer/actress Lainie Kazan became a celebrity by indirection. In 1964, Kazan was engaged to understudy Barbra Streisand in the Broadway production of {~Funny Girl}; the disappointed boos and catcalls that often greeted Kazan when she subbed for Streisand were generally dissipated by the standing ovations she'd receive at performance's end.

In 1966, Kazan was hired for her first weekly-TV stint on The Dean Martin Summer Show, exhibiting a keen sense of comic timing in the presence of such funsters as Dom DeLuise and Rowan & Martin. A firmly established nightclub star by 1980, Kazan made her official screen bow in 1980's One From the Heart (her actual screen debut in an obscure 1968 film was passed over in the studio publicity).

In 1982, she essayed her most memorable screen role, as the brash, blunt Brooklynite Bella Carroca in My Favorite Year; she would repeat this role many years later in the Broadway musical version of that film. The high points in Kazan's subsequent film work (Beaches et. al.) would far outweigh such doomed-from-the-start endeavors as Lust in the Dust (1985).

Kazan's series-TV assignments of the 1980s included the role of Rita in the 1986 Robby Benson detective series Tough Cookies, the best friend part of Claire Steiner in the Fox Network Patty Duke sitcom Karen's Song, and recurring appearances in the hospital drama St. Elsewhere.

Few of these appearances, however were of the zany calibre of Kazan's outrageous portrayal of an Italian-accented fairy godmother in Shelley Duvall's Faerie Tale Theatre's version of Pinocchio. Still a top attraction on the supper-club circuit, Lainie Kazan has opened two cabarets bearing her name in New York and Los Angeles.

~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide.