Frank Langella
About
Biography
Filmography
Family & Companions
Notes
"I like audiences believing I am the character I am, and if they hear too much about how I play it or too much about my personal life, I'm not that character, I'm the guy they saw on the Letterman show telling that anecdote. Some actors I can literally no longer watch, because they've told me too much about themselves." --Frank Langella to New York Newsday, January 16, 1994
"When I was a kid actor sitting in a classroom at Syracuse University, I remember a student raising his hand and saying, 'Well, professor, what about moments of Greatness? What about inspiration?' My teacher said, 'You don't have that. You don't strive for that. What you do is work hard, like a brick-layer. You get up on the stage every night and you work work work. You don't go out there looking to be inspired. Go out and work, and every once in a while on a rainy Wednesday afternoon with half a house out there you'll go off with these extraordinary flights of inspiration when the magic of your voice and your character and the audience and the lights and the actors all comes together. You're going to give one of these great performances, and you're not going to know why.'
Biography
Frank Langella's status as one of the most highly regarded actors of the American stage was well-deserved, as his grand presence earned two Tony Awards by the time he was 30 years old. During his career of 75-plus stage plays and three dozen films, Langella, with his penchant for bold, romantic leads and chilly villains, was entrusted with such classic characters as Count Dracula, Sherlock Holmes and Cyrano de Bergerac. He favored period classics during his early years, but middle age found him more at ease in contemporary film drama, where he earned critical notice for "Dave" (1993), "Good Night and Good Luck" (2005), a portrayal of Richard Nixon that migrated from the West End to Broadway to movie screens in "Frost/Nixon" (2008) and a whimsical turn as an aging thief in the science fiction comedy-drama "Robot and Frank" (2012). Even as high profile film roles eventually brought the actor mainstream recognition, Langella maintained his residency in the world of professional thespians rather than being a Hollywood commodity.
Born Nov. 1, 1938, Frank Langella was raised in Bayonne, NJ. From a childhood love of listening to opera and taking the stage in school plays, Langella went on to study drama at Syracuse University. After several years of performing in regional repertory and summer stock, he joined the Lincoln Center Repertory Company as one of its original members, studying under Elia Kazan. He made his New York City stage debut in "The Immoralist" in 1963 and spent much of the remainder of the decade onstage, building his reputation with OBIE-winning turns in "The Old Glory" (1964), "Good Day" (1965) and "The White Devil" (1965). He also appeared frequently at the Williamstown Theatre Festival and the Berkshire Theatre Festival, where he created the role of Will Shakespeare in "A Cry of Players" (1968), earning another Drama Desk Award. Langella made an excellent feature film debut as a swaggering, self-centered amoralist afraid of serious relationships in Frank Perry's "Diary of a Mad Housewife" (1970). That same year, he also came up aces as a Russian con man in Mel Brooks' "The Twelve Chairs," winning the Best Supporting Actor Award from the National Board of Review for the two performances.
After his role as the deranged counter-revolutionary son of Rita Hayworth in the Love Goddess' swan song, "The Wrath of God" (1972), Langella boldly inhabited the charismatic title character in the ABC TV movie, "The Mark of Zorro" (1974). He went on to spend the majority of the 1970s on stage, earning a Tony Award for his Broadway debut as a slithering lizard in Edward Albee's Pulitzer-winner, "Seascape" (1975). His legendary smoldering performance in the Broadway smash "Dracula" (1977) led to another Tony nomination - a significant accomplishment as the actor shared the spotlight with illustrator Edward Gorey's magnificent sets. Langella's acclaimed stage work reached larger audiences when tapings of his Williamstown Theatre Festival performances in Chekhov's "The Seagull" and Tennessee Williams' "Eccentricities of a Nightingale" aired on PBS' "Theater in America" series in 1975 and 1976. He reprised his immensely seductive "Dracula" on the big screen in 1979, and while some thought the trendy horror gimmicks employed by director John Badham upstaged Langella's acclaimed Broadway characterization, the film did fine with both blood-thirsty audiences and swooning female fans at the box office. What followed was a burst of sex-symbol mania over Langella's brooding good looks, which he rode into the next decade.
The seasoned Broadway actor branched out into directing at the helm of Albert Innaurato's "Passione" on Broadway in 1980, and on the big screen he was quite good as a down-on-his-luck actor in Michael Pressman's sleeper "Those Lips, Those Eyes" (1980). In one of several of Langella's portrayals of famous artists, he essayed famous Italian composer Antonino Salieri in Sir Peter Hall's stage production of "Amadeus" (1982). The following year, he tackled painter Leonardo Da Vinci in the PBS show "I, Leonardo: A Journey of the Mind" (PBS, 1983). Langella produced and starred in a 1984 off-Broadway revival of "After the Fall," and appeared in George C. Scott's production of Noel Coward's "Design for Living" (1984) and Mike Nichols' 1985 staging of "Hurlyburly." On the small screen, he portrayed famed sculptor Frederic Auguste Bartholdi in the historic made-for-television offering, "Liberty" (NBC, 1986). For the most part, worthy big screen roles continued to elude him and he landed in questionable movies like "The Men's Club" (1986), the tedious, imitative fantasy "Masters of the Universe" (1987), and in Roger Vadim's ill-advised remake of "And God Created Woman" (1988). He rebounded with one of his more famous roles, starring as British literary hero Sherlock Holmes in a Broadway production of "Sherlock's Last Case" (1987). He revived the role to an excellent reception in HBO's "Sherlock Holmes" (1991).
Now white-haired and enjoying a comfortable position as a highly regarded stage and screen thespian, Langella's career reached new heights in the 1990s. He gave a tremendously villainous performance as a duplicitous White House chief of staff in "Dave" (1993), and was equally ominous as the brilliant, cynical arms designer of HBO's "Doomsday Gun" (1994). In a rare appearance in broad comedy, he was seen as a department administrator in support of Arnold Schwarzenegger in Ivan Reitman's "Junior" (1994). Langella returned to the New York stage to play family patriarch Junius Brutus Booth in Austin Pendleton's "Booth" (1994), and hit theaters in double duds "Cutthroat Island" (1995) and the sports comedy "Eddie" (1996), which begat a long-term relationship with co-star Whoopi Goldberg. He rebounded by tackling another historical figure, playing the Pharaoh to Ben Kingsley's "Moses" (TNT, 1996), while on stage he garnered acclaim for what Variety called a "hair-raising" performance as August Strindberg's "The Father" (1996). He also gave a delicious turn as the perpetually preening matinee idol Garry Essendine in a revival of Noel Coward's "Present Laughter" (1996). His role as a playwright vying for the affections of a seductive teenager in the second film adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov's "Lolita" (1997) met with mixed reviews, and the controversial film was banned from feature release in the U.S., but aired on Showtime in 1998.
Dusting off a character he had played twice on stage in Williamstown, Langella scripted, directed and starred off-Broadway as "Cyrano de Bergerac" (1997) in a scaled-down adaptation of his own vision. He appeared in the NBC miniseries "Jason and the Argonauts" (2000) before essaying the role of a cable network owner for ABC's "The Beast" (2001), a short-lived series about the 24-hour World News Service (WNS) network. The following year, he gave a Tony Award-winning turn in Ivan Turgenev's "Fortune's Fool" at the Stamford Center for the Arts in Connecticut. Roles in a string of minor films followed before Langella resurfaced in a major way with his magnetic portrayal of the demanding, compelling and sometimes hypocritical acting teacher Goddard Fulton in the George Clooney-Steven Soderbergh-produced improvised series, "Unscripted" (HBO, 2005). He remained on the air in a recurring role as Pino, the mercurial owner of a high class New York restaurant, in the short-lived sitcom "Kitchen Confidential" (Fox, 2005). In one of Langella's best known film roles, he portrayed legendary CBS head William S. Paley, forced to find the delicate balance between allowing journalist Edward R. Murrow to take on Sen. Joseph McCarthy but also maintaining safe network business sense, in Clooney's "Good Night and Good Luck" (2005). The critical fave was a nominee for both Oscar and Golden Globe Best Pictures.
In a follow-up coup, Langella was cast in the role of Daily Planet newspaper editor Perry White in Bryan Singer's blockbuster "Superman Returns" (2006). In the summer of that year, he flew to London for a long stage run portraying Richard Nixon in the West End production "Frost/Nixon," a drama based on the televised interviews the former president did with British broadcaster David Frost in 1977. After receiving an overwhelmingly positive response, the show was exported to Broadway where Langella's performance earned him a Tony Award, Drama Desk Award, and Outer Critic's Circle Award for Best Actor. On movie screens that year Langella earned multiple film festival nominations for his starring role as a fading novelist in the indie drama "Starting Out in the Evening" (2007), based on the novel by Brian Morton. The following year, he reprised his Nixon characterization in Ron Howard's film adaptation of "Frost/Nixon" (2008), which earned him a Golden Globe nod for Best Performance by an Actor, as well as his first ever Academy Award nomination.
After a starring run on Broadway in "A Man for All Seasons," Langella's flair for the ominous was again used with good measure in the 2009 horror film "The Box." He went on to play a financial manager whose tragic end unearths the shady practices of the head of an investment bank (Josh Brolin) in Oliver Stone's disappointing follow up, "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps" (2010), starring Shia LaBeouf and Michael Douglas. From there, he was a wealthy real estate magnate whose son and heir (Ryan Gosling) is accused of murdering his wife (Kirsten Dunst) in the true crime thriller, "All Good Things" (2010), a loosely re-imagined telling of the real-life case involving billionaire Robert Durst. After a supporting turn opposite Liam Neeson and January Jones in the action thriller "Unknown" (2011), Langella was an aging ex-con whose given a robot (voiced by Peter Sarsgaard) to care for him, only to use it to perform a heist in the indie comedy "Robot & Frank" (2012). Supporting roles in "Muppets Most Wanted" (2014), sports drama "Draft Day" (2014), biblical epic "Noah" (2014), and indie comedy-drama "The Driftless Area" (2015) followed, as well as a guest turn on espionage drama "The Americans" (FX 2013-18). Langella also appeared as conservative politician Richard Russell, Jr. in the LBJ biopic "All the Way" (HBO 2016).
Filmography
Cast (Feature Film)
Music (Feature Film)
Cast (Special)
Cast (TV Mini-Series)
Life Events
1959
Toured Europe with folk-singing group
1963
New York stage debut, "The Immoralist"
1967
First appeared onstage in the play "Dracula"
1967
Acted in the innaugural performance of "The Devils" at Los Angeles' Mark Taper Forum
1968
Portrayed a young Will Shakespeare in the stage drama "A Cry of Players"
1969
Stage directing debut with "John and Abigail"
1970
Film debut, "Diary of a Mad Housewife"; also acted that year in Mel Brooks' "The Twelve Chairs"
1971
Cast in the title role of "Cyrano de Bergerac" at the Williamstown Theater Festival
1973
Made TV debut on an episode of the short-lived romantic anthology series "Love Story" (NBC)
1974
First TV-movie, "The Mark of Zorro" (ABC), playing the title role
1975
Appeared in the Williamstown staging of "The Seagull"; filmed for public television's "Theater in America"
1975
Broadway debut as a lizard in Edward Albee's "Seascape"; earned a Best Supporting Actor Tony
1976
Starred with Blythe Danner in Tennessee Williams' "Eccentricities of a Nightingale" at the Williamstown Theater Festival
1977
Scored Broadway triumph in the title role of "Dracula"; earned a Best Actor Tony nomination
1979
Reprised "Dracula" for the screen
1980
Undertook role of "Cyrano de Bergerac" for a second time at the Williamstown Theater Festival
1980
Directed playwright Albert Innaurato's "Passione" on Broadway
1982
Played Salieri on Broadway in "Amadeus"
1984
Produced and starred as Quentin in off-Broadway revival of Arthur Miller's "After the Fall"
1984
Co-starred with Jill Clayburgh in Noel Coward's "Design for Living"
1985
Returned to Broadway as Eddie in David Rabe's acclaimed "Hurlyburly"
1987
Produced and starred on Broadway as Sherlock Holmes in "Sherlock's Last Case"
1987
Went unrecognizable as the villain Skeletor in "Masters of the Universe"
1991
Made musical comedy stage debut as Henry Higgins in the Houston Grand Opera staging of "My Fair Lady"
1993
Portrayed evil White House chief of staff in "Dave"
1993
Starred opposite Madonna (as her ex-lover) in the uneven thriller "Body of Evidence"
1994
Appeared as family patriarch Junius Brutus Booth in New York stage production of Austin Pendleton's "Booth"
1996
Earned positive reviews playing the title role in the revival of August Strindberg's searing play "The Father"
1996
Co-starred with Whoopi Goldberg in the film comedy "Eddie"
1996
Earned acclaim for his Broadway turn as hammy actor Garry Essedine in a revival of Noel Coward's "Present Laughter"
1996
Played the Pharaoh to Ben Kingsley's "Moses" (TNT)
1997
Directed, starred in the title role, and adapted Edmund Rostand's "Cyrano de Bergerac" in an intimate off-Broadway setting
1997
Played Claire Quilty in Adrian Lyne's version of "Lolita" (banned from feature release in the U.S.; aired on Showtime in August 1998)
1998
Provided the voice of Archer for Joe Dante's "Toy Soldiers"
1999
Played a seemingly fit TV producer who discovers that he stands a good chance of dying within the year of inoperable cancer in "I'm Losing You"
2000
Appeared in NBC miniseries "Jason and the Argonauts"
2001
Co-starred with Joan Collins in the London stage production of "Moon Over Buffalo" (retitled as "Over the Moon), withdrew from production shortly after the opening
2001
Portrayed a shark-like executive in a memorable cameo in the remake of "Sweet November"
2002
Appeared opposite Alan Bates in "Fortune's Fool" on Broadway
2003
Played Tobi Powell, an aging choreographer and dance teacher in the play "Match"; received a Tony nomination
2005
Co-starred in David Duchovny's directorial debut "House of D"
2005
Starred in the George Clooney-directed "Goodnight, and Good Luck"
2006
Cast as Clark Kent's boss Perry White in Bryan Singer's "Superman Returns"
2007
Played an aging writer in "Starting Out in the Evening"; earned an Independent Spirit Award Nomination for Best Actor
2007
Won a Tony award playing Richard Nixon in Peter Morgan's acclaimed Broadway drama "Frost/Nixon"
2008
Reprised role of Richard Nixon for the film adaption of "Frost/Nixon"; directed by Ron Howard; earned Golden Globe, SAG and Academy Award nominations for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role
2009
Cast in Richard Kelly's horror film "The Box"
2010
Co-starred in Oliver Stone's "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps," the sequel to his 1987 Academy Award-winning film
2010
Played Ryan Gosling's controlling father in "All Good Things"
2011
Co-starred with Susan Sarandon in the HBO drama "The Miraculous Year"
2011
Starred in the Roundabout Theatre Company production "Man and Boy"
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Notes
"I like audiences believing I am the character I am, and if they hear too much about how I play it or too much about my personal life, I'm not that character, I'm the guy they saw on the Letterman show telling that anecdote. Some actors I can literally no longer watch, because they've told me too much about themselves." --Frank Langella to New York Newsday, January 16, 1994
"When I was a kid actor sitting in a classroom at Syracuse University, I remember a student raising his hand and saying, 'Well, professor, what about moments of Greatness? What about inspiration?' My teacher said, 'You don't have that. You don't strive for that. What you do is work hard, like a brick-layer. You get up on the stage every night and you work work work. You don't go out there looking to be inspired. Go out and work, and every once in a while on a rainy Wednesday afternoon with half a house out there you'll go off with these extraordinary flights of inspiration when the magic of your voice and your character and the audience and the lights and the actors all comes together. You're going to give one of these great performances, and you're not going to know why.'
"The reason people stay in this profession is to have those moments every once in a while, but 90% of the time you go to work. At 7:30 I'll go to the theatre, and I will want to go out there in order to do my job and if, on a particular night, it takes off in some special magical way where we're all holding on ... it's great. There are other nights you don't feel that so-called magic. That's when you earn your salary." --Langella quoted in Playbill, March 10, 1997.
"I'm still growing and learning and experimenting and hoping to find new truths in the characters I play. If somebody asks me a question, I'll give them my experience, but if you begin to think of yourself [as a mentor], you're saying, 'Now I've arrived someplace', and I don't feel that. I still have a lot of questions myself." --Langella to Kathy Henderson in InTheater, November 28, 1997.
"Sure, everyone loved the vampire story. But I made a concerted effort never to trade on it. Almost any actor who's played it has been taken down for the count--if you'll pardon the pun." --Langella to Larry Worth in New York Post, December 10, 1997.
"To be an actor in the theater is to teach yourself and keep yourself disciplined and honorable. And if you do that, you get a chance to fly in this kind of emotional paradise that acting can be when it's ... really great. Acting is just as much hard work as digging a ditch. And if you do all the yeoman work, inspiration will come."Revelations come when you're in the thick of it, pitting yourself ... against something that is bigger than yourself ... I'm going to choose roles where every night I go out there thinking I have to go up against something that the man in the audience, as Camus says, takes a lifetime to face and ... do it eight times a week."You have to maintain a certain attitude of childlikeness--because it requires it to be grown-up and go into a theater and put on a costume and walk out on a stage and say other people's words. But with each decade, I come to value decent, honorable, disciplined behavior more." --to Los Angeles Times, April 5, 1998.
"When I was a very young actor, I remember being given a piece of advice by a director who said, 'An actor is in two positions in his career: You want them or they want you.' If you want them, you could be sitting on their desk, lighting their cigar and kissing their ass and not get the part. But if they want you, you could be in the Sahara in a tent ... and a note will slip under the tent saying 'please report to work.'"He told me that when I was 23 and I couldn't fathom it. But I know how absolutely right he was. This moment is what matters. That takes almost your lifetime to figure out. I don't know why it takes so long, but it does. That's probably the single most important thing I could leave with any actor." --Langella quoted in Los Angeles Times, April 5, 1998.
