BILL ZANE
EARLY LIFE :
Bill Zane was born on February 24, 1966, in Chicago, Illinois, to Thalia and William George Zane Sr., both of whom were professional actors and founders of a school for medical technicians. His parents are both of Greek descent (from Chios through his mother and Mani through his father), and his family’s original surname, “Zanetakos,” was anglicized to “Zane” by his parents, who also raised him in the Greek Orthodox faith. He has an older sister, Lisa Zane, who is an actress and singer.
After completing a year abroad in Switzerland at The American School (TASIS), Zane graduated from Francis W. Parker School. He attended Harand Camp of the Theater Arts, located in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin.
CAREER :
Budget action film The Phantom, based on Lee Falk’s comic.
Zane played the snobbish millionaire misanthrope Caledon Hockley in James Cameron’s 1997 blockbuster Titanic. This role as Rose’s (played by Kate Winslet) fiancé earned him an MTV Movie Award nomination for “Best Villain” and a Blockbuster Entertainment Award. He was also nominated for a SAG award.
In 1998, he starred in and produced I Woke Up Early the Day I Died, a silent film based on Ed Wood’s last script, intended as a parody of bad filmmaking. He won several awards for this work at the B-Movie Film Festival, including Best Movie and Best Actor. The year after, he starred opposite Timothy Dalton, Bruce Payne, Sean Pertwee, and Leonor Varela (who became his fiancé after the shooting ended) in a TV movie about Cleopatra. Zane played the part of Mark Antony.
The same year, in an episode of The New Batman Adventures, he voiced John Rolfe in Disney’s Pocahontas II: Journey to a New World and Etrigan the Demon.
Zane was instrumental in realizing the critically acclaimed film The Believer, which won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance Film Festival in 2001. In it, he portrayed neo-Nazi Curtis Zampf and starred opposite Ryan Gosling. The same year, he also had a cameo as himself in the comedy Zoolander.
Zane appeared on Broadway in Chicago, where he played lawyer Billy Flynn.
Zane also had a recurring role in the television series Charmed, in which he played poetry-loving ex-demon Drake. He also provided the voice of Ansem, the main antagonist of the 2002 video game Kingdom Hearts, opposite Haley Joel Osment. Though archive audio of Zane was later used for Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, he was replaced by Richard Epcar for the rest of the series from Kingdom Hearts II onwards. Zane’s performance, however, was kept for the Kingdom Hearts Final Mix remaster in Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 ReMix.
In 2006, Zane starred in Arthur Allan Seidelman’s West End production of Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks as an acerbic gay dance instructor opposite Claire Bloom. The same year, he appeared in the Turkish film Valley of the Wolves Iraq, part of the Kurtlar Vadisi franchise. The film tells the story of the U.S. Army running amok in Iraq, eventually brought into check by a Turkish soldier. Zane plays Sam William Marshall, a cruel U.S. soldier who is the main antagonist in the film.
The show, however, was not renewed for the 2009–2010 season.
Zane is a principal at RadioactiveGiant, a film and television production and distribution company.
Zane starred in the 2012 action/thriller film The Kill Hole in January 2017. He appeared in a commercial for KFC as a gold-colored Colonel Sanders to pitch the restaurant chain’s newest limited-time flavor, Georgia Gold Honey Mustard BBQ chicken. Zane also appeared in an episode of Community, season 6’s “Advanced Safety Features.”
Zane was also featured in two episodes of The Boys portraying a fictional version of himself who made a movie with Popclaw and also attended a comic convention with Tara Reid. In season 3, Zane appeared as himself, portraying Alastair Adana in the Vought film Not Without My Dolphin’.
PERSONAL LIFE :
Zane was married to actress Lisa Collins from 1989 until 1995. He was also engaged to Chilean actress Leonor Varela, his co-star in the television film Cleopatra (1999).
Zane was later engaged to marry British model-turned-actress Kelly Brook, whom he met when they co-starred in the movie Survival Island (2005), also known as Three. They split in April 2008, got back together shortly after that, and ended the relationship in August 2008. Zane dated Croatian model Jasmina Hdagha in 2010, but they broke up later that year.
Through a friend, he met American model Candice Neil, the mother of his two daughters and is also currently engaged. Their first daughter, Ava Catherine, was born in 2011, and their second daughter, Gia, was born in 2014.
In 1999, Zane participated in the first Gumball 3000 rally, driving a 1964 Aston Martin DB5.
Zane is also an abstract expressionist painter. He has had numerous solo and group exhibitions.
