Billy Zane

William George Zane Jr. was born on February 24, 1966, in Chicago, Illinois, to Thalia and William George Zane Sr., both professional actors and co-founders of a school for medical technicians. His parents, of Greek descent — his mother's family from Chios and his father's from Mani — anglicized the family surname from Zanetakos to Zane. Zane grew up in the Greek Orthodox faith and has an older sister, Lisa Zane, who is also an actress and singer. He completed a year at The American School in Switzerland before graduating from Francis W. Parker School and attending Harand Camp of the Theater Arts in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin.

Zane's screen career began in 1985 with a role in Back to the Future, followed by an appearance in Critters in 1986. Around the same period he appeared in music videos for Sheena Easton's songs "Do It For Love" and "Magic of Love." In 1988 he played Tony Gambini in Murder, She Wrote: A Very Good Year for Murder and appeared in an episode of Matlock. He reprised his Back to the Future role in the 1989 sequel and that same year earned international attention playing villain Hughie Warriner opposite Nicole Kidman and Sam Neill in the Australian thriller Dead Calm, a performance that brought him a nomination for the Chicago Film Critics Association Award for Most Promising Actor. Also in 1989, he appeared in the NBC film The Case of the Hillside Stranglers and in Adam Sandler's Going Overboard, which was not released to a wider audience until 1996.

The early 1990s saw Zane take on a range of film and television roles. He co-starred as bombardier Lieutenant Val Kozlowski in Memphis Belle (1990), a dramatization of a World War II Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress bomber crew. In 1991 he appeared as the recurring character John Justice Wheeler in the second season of David Lynch's Twin Peaks. He co-starred alongside Tilda Swinton in the 1992 film adaptation of Virginia Woolf's Orlando, played Shakespearean actor Mr. Fabian in Tombstone (1993), and took a starring role in Sniper (1993). He also appeared in Posse alongside Mario Van Peebles and in Only You opposite Marisa Tomei and Robert Downey Jr. For the Tales from the Crypt franchise, he played The Collector — a henchman of Satan — in Demon Knight (1995) and portrayed a magician who killed to steal tricks from other performers in the episode "Well-Cooked Hams."

In 1996, Zane starred as the eponymous hero Kit Walker in the big-budget action film The Phantom, based on Lee Falk's comic strip. That same year he appeared on Broadway in the musical Chicago, playing lawyer Billy Flynn. The production marked his Broadway debut and drew on his roots in Chicago, Illinois, the city where he was born and where the musical is set.

Zane's most commercially prominent role came in 1997 when he played the wealthy antagonist Caledon Hockley in James Cameron's Titanic. The performance earned him a nomination for the MTV Movie Award for Best Villain, a Blockbuster Entertainment Award, and, along with the rest of the ensemble cast, a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination. In 1998 he starred in and produced I Woke Up Early the Day I Died, a silent film based on Ed Wood's final script, winning Best Movie and Best Actor at the B-Movie Film Festival. The following year he played Mark Antony opposite Leonor Varela in the miniseries Cleopatra, alongside Timothy Dalton, Bruce Payne, and Sean Pertwee. Also in 1999, he voiced John Rolfe in Disney's Pocahontas II: Journey to a New World and Etrigan the Demon in an episode of The New Batman Adventures.

In 2001, Zane appeared as neo-fascist Curtis Zampf in The Believer, which won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, and made a cameo as himself in the comedy Zoolander. He provided the voice of Ansem, the main antagonist of the 2002 video game Kingdom Hearts, opposite Haley Joel Osment. Archive audio of his performance was later used in Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, and his recording was retained for the Kingdom Hearts Final Mix remaster in Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 Remix, though he was replaced by Richard Epcar beginning with Kingdom Hearts II. He also took on a recurring role in the television series Charmed, playing poetry-loving ex-demon Drake. In 2006, Zane starred in Arthur Allan Seidelman's West End production of Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks opposite Claire Bloom and appeared in the Turkish film Valley of the Wolves: Iraq, playing antagonist Sam William Marshall. He later took over Timothy Olyphant's role as Christina Applegate's ex-boyfriend on the sitcom Samantha Who?, which was not renewed for the 2009–2010 season.

In 2012, Zane starred in the action-thriller The Kill Hole. He appeared in season six of Community and in January 2017 appeared in a KFC commercial as a gold-colored Colonel Sanders promoting the chain's Georgia Gold Honey Mustard BBQ chicken. He appeared in two episodes of The Boys portraying a fictional version of himself and returned in season three as himself playing Alastair Adana in the in-universe Vought film Not Without My Dolphin. In 2024, he portrayed Larry Ray in the Lifetime film Devil on Campus: The Larry Ray Story.

Zane was married to actress Lisa Collins from 1989 to 1995 and was subsequently engaged to Leonor Varela following their work together on Cleopatra. He later became engaged to British model and actress Kelly Brook, whom he met while co-starring in Survival Island (2005); the relationship ended in August 2008. He has two daughters, Ava Catherine, born in 2011, and Gia, born in 2014, with American model Candice Neill, to whom he became engaged. Zane is also a principal at RadioactiveGiant, a film and television production and distribution company.