the throat out of an enemy because whoever you're playing,

he's your guy.

You have to play him with 100% belief.

Hello, this is Frank Langella

and this is the timeline of my career.

God help us all.

"The Immoralist" in 1963 was considered hot stuff.

Not much was done about homosexuality in those days.

It was based on a book by Andre Gide,

and the Frenchman, Michel, that I played,

went to a foreign land where he took one look

at a young Arab boy and fell in love.

That was like big time.

The raciest line from that play

was at the end of the second act

where he and his wife were in a tiny little room.

He looked at her and said, "I am what you think I am."

We had lines around the block for the first three months.

You couldn't get in.

Every gay man in New York came to see it,

and we ran for two years.

- Here, tell me, what goes on in this great house?

- Mostly dying.

- I had done a play with Mel's wife Anne Bancroft,

and Mel was casting that movie and he wanted to do it

with English actors.

In the middle of this casting he said,

"Oh [beep], let Frankie do it."

That's how I got my first part in the movies.

It's kind of like a hand-me down.

And I was a kid.

I've nothing but great, fond memories of the insanity of it

and the idea that these enormous amounts of Yugoslavians

were being directed by Mel in English,

and they couldn't understand a word he said.

They never laughed at any of his jokes.

He wasn't easy, and I was a new kid

and therefore emotional about everything.

And he would say, "Oh for God's sake, just do it," you know.

Dom was breathtakingly funny in life

as well as he was on camera.

I fell once trying to pick up Ron Moody

and I cut a big hole in my rear end

and they put me into bed.

And Dom came to my room dressed as a nurse and said,

"How do you do, I'm Nurse DeLuise?

"I'm here to tend your wounds." [laughs]

It was a wonderful, joyous way to start your film career.

[dramatic instrumental music]

- Need a hand, mon pere?

- Ooh, come on, God!

- How old are you, 28, 29?

- It's none of your business.

- Easy baby, easy.

You know you're in terrible shape.

- "Diary of a Mad Housewife," my second movie

which actually opened first.

I never do well in those kind of straightforward parts.

I'm a character actor.

I always like to find elements of somebody

that was different and unique and original.

It was a wonderfully written script

based on a wonderful book.

And of course that film was also inordinately well-received.

It was a great one-two punch for a young actor

who'd never been in the movies.

- It's a terrible thing to say about a lady.

- Oh screw off, Pocahontas.

- I'm going to report you to women's lib.

- Count Dracula.

[tense instrumental music]

- Good evening.

- When I read it I thought, and you know,

it's not the greatest writing in the world.

It's a potboiler.

I had to find a way to do it

that was totally not Bela Lugosi.

I never drink wine.

Once I got into a rehearsal,

I hadn't realized how frightened I was,

truly almost frozen with fear.

And I couldn't come up with a way to play him

and I didn't wanna fall into the trap.

So I just spoke the lines like that,

very, very simply and directly terrifying the producers.

And we had a dress rehearsal and suddenly he arrived,

the idea of him being a beautifully well-spoken Gothic hero.

In my mind he was a hero

because all he needed to live was blood

and he needed to get it from beautiful women.

It was like being Elvis Presley for a year.

I couldn't go down to the theater without body guards.

And the play just struck a chord, particularly in women,

and in men too because there was a great love scene

at the end of the second act.

And I've never met anybody who's seen that play

who hasn't said to me, "I got laid that night so great."

It was a year of my life, a great sensational year.

I doubt I'll ever have anything like that again.

I didn't wanna do the movie right away

because the producer,

he wanted it to be like the Hammer films.

All of them were pressuring me enormously

to have blood coming out of my mouth,

to wear wolf's eyes, to wear fangs.

I wouldn't allow them to put fangs on me.

I wouldn't do any blood on my face.

I just wanted to play what I believed was a lover,

not a killer.

You don't have much, you know,

when you're an actor in a film.

You don't.

It's all in other people's control.

What you do have is control

over the character you're playing

and nobody else can do it but you.

And you have to risk being unpopular.

- I said it would been nice to see you smile.

[romantic instrumental music]

- Tell me about the loneliness of good, He-Man.

Is it equal to the loneliness of evil?

- My four year old son was Skeletor.

We bought him all the stuff

and he'd run around the house saying, "I am the power."

And Gary Goddard, the director, called me in

to meet with him.

And it was a terrible script, just awful,

but I couldn't resist the challenge

of trying to make him real and believable.

And I wanted my four year old, of course,

to see me as Skeletor.

I spent hours and hours and hours with Bud Westmore

trying to get the look.

And I pulled everything I could

out of "The Man with a Thousand Faces."

I would call Gary at two o'clock in the morning and say,

"Look at this line I found.

"'Tell me about the loneliness of good.

"'Is it equal to the loneliness of evil?'"

And we had many of those in the movie.

Most of what I said was rewritten or ad-libbed on the spot.

I remember Paul Newman when I asked him,

"What do you do if you're playing a character

"where the person opposite you isn't helping

"and the director might be giving you bad ideas

"or your costume doesn't fit,

"or you don't like a piece of makeup?"

And he answered in four words.

"I play my character."

And it's brilliant advice for any young actor.

Don't try to make up for it.

Don't try to overcome another actor.

Don't try to do too much in order to make up

for the fact that the dialogue isn't good.

Just play your character and talk honestly.

The film was not a great success, but over the years,

it's become a great camp movie.

And many, many people over the years have said,

"How could you do that?"

You know, with a great deal of superiority.

And I would say, "I think it's one of my best performances."

I loved doing it.

The story that will make you laugh about that

is that I asked if I could have a private screening of it

when it was finished.

I brought my four year old.

I gave him a big bag of popcorn.

He sat next to me and I thought,

"Oh, my son is gonna be so proud of me."

He fell asleep in the first reel. [laughs]

I don't think he ever even saw me.

- Let this be my first decree.

Those who do not pledge themselves to me shall be destroyed!

[dramatic instrumental music]

- We didn't wanna have to tell you this, Dave,

but the vice president is mentally unbalanced.

- I haven't seen "Dave," I think maybe in, how old is it?

It's 20 years old.

I was in a very bad period in my career

and I was doing a play in L.A.,

which really is like you might as well be zipped up

in a plastic bag and hidden under a bed.

My agent called and said,

"Ivan Reitman wants you to come in."

And I was at a terrible period, really.

Kids were in schools and I was running out of money.

And I went to see him and for the first time in my life,

I created a power animal, which a lot of my friends did.

I created a lion, imaginary lion who sat next to me

in the car.

And then as I was driving I would talk to him and he'd say,

"Don't worry, nobody's gonna get you."

And he came out of the car with me in the studio.

He sat right next to me to protect me.

And I did the part from heart

and didn't hear anything for seven weeks.

And then one day my agent called crying and said,

"You got the part."

In the third or fourth day of rehearsal I said to Ivan,

"Why didn't you make me wait for seven weeks?"

He said, "'Cause I went all over New York and Britain

"trying to find somebody who could do it better.

"And I couldn't find anybody."

And I thought well, that is clever of you

but awfully unkind to me.

- Westbank where-

[television clicking]

- It's simple, Ellen.

We send the vice president to Africa, or something.

- She was my daughter.

[dish clinking]

She was my child.

- Oh you know, I adore children myself, and fathers.

I love fathers.

- I did a film called "Lolita" directed by Adrian Lyne.

And I played Clare Quilty,

one of the great, great villains of all time.

That experience was an extraordinary one,

but Adrian would sometimes do 35 or 40 takes.

There was a scene in "Lolita" where I was shot

and I had blood in my mouth.

I was about to die.

And I had to spit the blood out in front of me,

and the blood didn't taste very well.

I did it 39 times.

It was making me sick to my stomach and I said to Adrian,

"What are you looking for?"

He said, "I want the blood to spray a certain way."

And I said okay and I just kept doing it.

- [gasping] Get out.

- I was in London at the Old Vic theater

playing a horrible comedy opposite Joan Collins,

and got no audiences.

In this theater of 1,700 people,

we often played to 50 or 60 people.

And I thought well, I guess I'm done.

And over the transom of my dressing room,

like a bad movie, came a manila envelope

and it was "Fortune's Fool" with Alan Bates.

And I thought oh God, what a great role.

And that began a sort of resurgence of my career

as a Broadway actor.

That was a great, great success.

Alan is to date my most favorite co-tar and friend.

He died not too long after we closed.

He was suffering all during the play with pancreatic cancer

and never told us.

He's the most generous actor I think I've ever worked with.