Nathan Lane

Oh, that's an Onion headline.

Right.

Well, I was just making a joke.

But because I come from an Irish background, it was a way of – to tell you the truth, it was a way of avoiding talking about the real facts of my childhood.

I just sort of covered it in a general way with a joke.

which is typical of me.

But the facts were that my father was an alcoholic and my mother eventually after his death and her own mother's death, my grandmother, she had a breakdown and it took about five years and it was finally diagnosed as what was called manic depression then.

So

I had to grow up fast.

My father, I didn't have much of a relationship with because he was really not home a lot.

And when he was, he was drunk or recovering.

You know, my memory is that, you know, he would come home and he was holding onto the walls.

He couldn't walk.

When my mother would get him to go to AA, which she did a couple of times, and he had – so he had a couple – two periods that I remember of sobriety and she – my mother would say to me –

When he was sober, she said you would always – I was only 9, 10.

He died when I was 11 and she said I would stay next to him.

I would stay close to him and hold his hand.

One time he – I remember we were in this apartment and it was very cold and we were – now it becomes Dickensian.

We were by a radiator and he was talking to me and he said –

You know, you're going to have to learn how to take care of yourself because your mother and I aren't going to be, you know, around all the time.