LOS ANGELES, California—Add Frank Langella to the list of leading Best Actor contenders this year. Frank, who was noted early in his career for his portrayal of Dracula in both theater and film, is simply mesmerizing as President Richard Nixon in director Ron Howard’s “Frost/Nixon,” which will likely lead other Best Picture candidates, as well.

The film is Peter Morgan’s movie adaptation of his acclaimed play about the events leading to the historic interview between British TV show host, David Frost, and Richard Nixon after his resignation as US President in the wake of the Watergate break-in scandal. Frank, who won a Tony for his performance onstage, and Michael Sheen (as David) reprise the roles they played in both the West End and Broadway productions of the play. The story is essentially about these two men and their assistants preparing for the interviews and the interviews themselves, but it is to Ron’s credit that he makes the proceedings very interesting.

Frank is currently winning acclaim again on Broadway as Sir Thomas More in the revival of Robert Bolt’s “A Man for All Seasons.” On the eve of our recent press con in New York with Frank, who is 70, we watched him in the physically demanding role at the American Airlines Theatre. And yet, the following morning, there he was, looking fresh for our interview with him at The Ritz-Carlton in Central Park. We happened to ride the same elevator with him. Women congratulated him for his take on the disgraced Nixon. “The Best Actor race will be between you and Sean Penn (for ‘Milk’)!” gushed one lady to Frank, who merely gave a smile in his Old-World, gentlemanly way.

More hectic

When Frank sat down for the interview, he was asked how he did it—to be in a play the night before and then, show up at the hotel this morning, his voice projecting very well all the way to the back of the room. It turned out that he had an even more hectic schedule than we imagined!

It wasn’t straight to bed after the play. Frank revealed: “I had guests last night, so we went out for dinner at Universal Pictures (laughter).” Also laughing, he added: “It’s always wonderful to have dinner at the studio, so we sat up until about 1:30 or two in the morning. I got up about 5:30 or six this morning because I couldn’t sleep. I have a lot of stuff to do, but I don’t know what it is. I don’t work out or exercise. I think it’s due to my Italian stock—it’s genetics for most of us, and I have a pretty good basic constitution. But, thank you for asking, and to 42 pounds of make-up.”

Frank also credited make-up, which was not discernible at all, for helping him capture the essence of Nixon in “Frost/Nixon.” He explained, “It took two hours to make me look as if I wasn’t wearing anything—but I was. We did a little, gentle thing right there (he pointed at his nose) to create the sense that I had a slightly bigger nose. I’m sure nobody saw it. It also took a long time to get the hairline correctly.”

“They also helped enormously,” Frank said about “Frost/Nixon” being filmed in Nixon’s California home, Casa Pacifica, and in the house where the celebrated interviews actually took place. He recalled: “Just walking in Casa Pacifica, getting into a car and driving down the same driveway that Nixon drove down on, meeting the man who bought the house from Nixon and this man describing to me what the President was like when he opened the door for him were immeasurably helpful.”

Asked if he got in touch with the Nixon family since taking on the role, Frank was emphatic in his answer: “No, I didn’t, because I just couldn’t bring myself to invade their privacy. The Cox family (Tricia Nixon is married to a Cox) came to see the play. There’s a rumor that Tricia is coming on Monday night, but it’s only a rumor. I’d love to talk to them! The loveliest moment that happened was Nixon’s granddaughter—Tricia’s daughter—came up to me and said, ‘Thank you for making granddaddy a person.’ That really meant a lot to me!”

Politics

On his view toward Nixon at the time of the Watergate scandal in the 1970s, Frank volunteered: “When Nixon resigned as President, I was in my 30s. I was working in summer theater. I was a young man just totally concerned with my life and career. I wasn’t paying much attention to politics. I thought like everybody at the time, that he was somewhat evil, because he gave that impression to the world. I didn’t really give him much attention and then, when it came time to play him, I thought, ‘Well, everybody’s more dimensional than one thing; everybody’s more than his sound bite, and everybody has many different facets to him.

“So, I began to read about Nixon. I visited his library. I visited the home where he was born. I looked at the little room he grew up in. It was probably just the area from where you are to here, eight by 10, and it was only 70 inches high, so I couldn’t stand up in it. I had to sit down on the bed. I decided that I wasn’t going to play a President, a crook and a drunk. I was going to play a man who found himself through his own pain, demons and unexpressed terrors in a situation of his own making. How could you play that and still manage to get across the fact that he had committed those crimes?”

He continued, “Nixon was like all of us—a human being—and he was particularly vulnerable to those demons, and particularly obvious about his pain. We saw it all the time, and that was why he was made fun of so much. He merely represented what all of us feel is the worst element of ourselves. He couldn’t hide them! I was with him for two-and-a-half years, from London to Broadway, and then, to the movie.”

Frank admitted, “I grew very fond of Nixon. I grew very compassionate toward him as a person. I decided that at no point would I judge his actions or would I condemn them. A lot of people have done that. When you’re inside a character, you don’t look at it and say, ‘Oh, this is a bad man’ or ‘This is a good man.’ You’re inside, so you’re doing what you’re doing. The more I got to work on him and become one with him, the more compassionate I felt toward why he brought himself down.”

Advance screenings

We told Frank that, as Nixon, his line in a scene, “When the President does it, that means it’s not illegal,” is resonating strongly with audiences at advance screenings (the belief is that viewers are correlating those words with the arrogance of the Bush administration), he commented: “No matter what era that line was said in, any audience would react to it because it comes at a point in the play and movie when Nixon is getting cornered more and more, and Frost is nailing him to the wall. It’s tantamount to that line in ‘A Few Good Men.’ Remember when Jack Nicholson says, ‘You can’t handle the truth!’? We all went that way, too. It’s shocking when you hear somebody say, ‘I’m the President of the United States. I will do what I want to do, and I will bend the law any way I can.’

“But, those of you who saw ‘A Man For All Seasons’ last night, which took place in the 1500s, heard similar words. Cromwell said the same thing, that it’s just a matter of finding the right law to bring down Thomas More, and if they don’t find the right law, they’ll make a law. That’s what people in power do (laughter)—whether it’s now or the 1500s.”

Celebrated case

In this celebrated case of checkbook journalism, David paid Nixon $600,000 for the right to interview him, post-Watergate. “Nixon did it because he needed money very badly at that point in his career,” Frank shared. “He needed the $600,000, which today would be worth several million dollars. Certainly, that was a tremendous amount of money, but he also wanted to see if he could resurrect himself and he missed. I don’t think he misjudged. He thought that talking to David would be a lesser demon than, say, going to Barbara Walters, Mike Wallace or CBS. I talked to all of those people. I talked to every network, and they all denied having offered him money. But, the fact is, they did! They just didn’t offer him as much as David did. It was a combination of him thinking there was more money to be made with David, and that David was a lightweight. Nixon had a brilliant lawyer’s mind.”

Frank admitted that he himself took some roles for the dough: “I raised two children in private schools, so you bet I’ve done things for money.”

One surprising thing we learned from the movie was that Diane Sawyer (played by Kate Jennings Grant) served as one of Nixon’s researchers for the interviews. Asked if he thinks Diane would be embarrassed to be seen as part of Nixon’s team in the film, Frank quipped, “No, because the girl who plays her is really dishy!”

E-mail rvnepales_5585@yahoo.com, and read his blog, “The Nepales Report,” on http:// blogs.inquirer.net/ nepalesreport.