Langella is one of my more respected actors, and this article confirms a lot of what I suspected about his professionalism and approach to his career. He played Nixon on Broadway, and immediately afterward filmed a movie of the same play. So there's a minor political tie-in. :) Mostly, I just found the article, like the actor, interesting.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/SHOWBIZ/10/07/theater.frank.langella.ap/index.htmlPlaying larger-than-life roles is nothing new to Langella, 69. In his career on stage and in film, he's tackled Dracula, Cyrano and Sherlock Holmes, Salieri in "Amadeus" and Perry White in "Superman Returns."
This time, he had to avoid the traps of playing a martyr: self-righteousness, ego and selfishness. "The more I try to find him, the more I realize how hard I have to work since I'm capable of all those things," he says.
"You know, one of the worst things anybody can do is to give in to the need to be popular or the need to be in the center of the going thing -- the right haircut, the right look, the right political party. That's death to individuality. That's death to growth."
snip
"Nixon, in his own way, who was a force of evil, still had a brilliant, extraordinarily gifted political mind," he says. "He then could not overcome the very thing that Sir Thomas says you need to overcome: Nixon could not take the high road. His greed, his political bitterness, his demons, which were so strong, overcame him."