Anthony Lane


Anthony Lane is a British journalist, and a film critic for The New Yorker magazine.

Career

Education and early career

Lane attended Sherborne School and graduated with a degree in English from Trinity College, Cambridge, where he also did graduate work on the poet T. S. Eliot. After graduation, he worked as a freelance writer and book reviewer for The Independent, where he was appointed deputy literary editor in 1989. In 1991, Lane was appointed film critic for The Independent on Sunday.

''The New Yorker''

In 1993, Lane was asked by The New Yorker's then-editor, Tina Brown, to join the magazine as a film critic. He also contributes longer pieces on film subjects — such as Alfred Hitchcock, Buster Keaton and Grace Kelly — and aspects of literature and the arts.
A collection of 140 of his The New Yorker reviews, essays, and profiles was published in 2002 under the title Nobody's Perfect — a reference to the final line of the film Some Like it Hot. A profile of the film's director, Billy Wilder, ends the book.

Lane's maxims

In his introduction to Nobody's Perfect: Writings from The New Yorker, Lane mentions five maxims that "should be obeyed by anyone who, having tried and failed to gain respectable employment, has decided to throw in the sponge and become a movie critic instead":
The explanation for the fifth maxim is a good example of Lane's style:

Professional recognition

Anthony Lane was awarded the 2001 National Magazine Award for Reviews & Criticism, for three of his New Yorker articles:
Lane has also been nominated for National Magazine Awards on a number of other occasions, but has never won one. The nominations include:
In 2008, Lane was named one of the top 30 critics in the world by More Intelligent Life, the web version of the lifestyle publication from The Economist. As of 2010, the movie review aggregation website Metacritic weighted Lane's movie reviews higher than any other critic's.

Personal life

Lane lives in Cambridge, England with Allison Pearson, a British writer and columnist. The couple have never married but have a daughter, Eveline, and a son, Thomas.