Kazan was born Lainie Levine in Brooklyn as the daughter of Carole (née Kazan) and Benjamin Levine. Kazan\'s mother Carole was of Sephardic Jewish extraction, her family having originally come from Jerusalem; and her father Benjamin, who was of Russian Ashkenazi Jewish descent, worked as a gambling bookmaker. Kazan has described her mother as "neurotic, fragile and artistic." She attended Brooklyn\'s Erasmus Hall High School, where she was a senior while Barbra Streisand, whom she would later understudy, was a sophomore. Kazan went on to graduate from Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York, on Long Island, in 1960. While at Hofstra, Kazan appeared in school musicals written and directed by a classmate, future Academy Award-winning director Francis Ford Coppola.\n', '

Kazan made her Broadway debut in 1961 with the musical The Happiest Girl in the World. She appeared the following year in another musical, Bravo Giovanni, and understudied Barbra Streisand for the lead role of Fanny Brice in Funny Girl (1964). When Streisand herself could not perform due to a throat condition, Kazan took her place in both a matinee and evening performance for one day of the show\'s run. Her popularity increasing, Kazan posed nude for the October 1970 issue of Playboy, which was reused in Pocket Playboy #4, issued in 1974. Her appearance in the magazine opened the door for her to headline at, and operate, two different Playboy Jazz Clubs. Overseen by Hugh Hefner himself, the clubs were called "Lainie’s Lounge East" and "Lainie\'s Lounge West," each on opposite coasts, with the one located in Manhattan and the other in Los Angeles. Her Playboy photographs inspired the look of Jack Kirby’s DC Comics superheroine, Big Barda.\n', '

Along with appearing in numerous supper clubs across the country, Kazan guest-starred on Dean Martin’s variety series twenty-six times. Other television work includes a recurring role as Aunt Frieda on the Fran Drescher sitcom The Nanny, the mother of Kirstie Alley\'s character on Veronica’s Closet, and such guest roles as one on St. Elsewhere, that resulted in an Emmy nomination. Her other television work has included The Paper Chase, Touched by an Angel, and Will & Grace as Grace\'s Aunt Honey.\n', '

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