A lion in winter

Frank Langella hits the sweet spot in Starting Out in the Evening.

An actor prepares, Stanislavsky said. For what, though, isn’t so clear. Will it be a career of early acclaim and sagging promise? A lengthy bask in the spotlight? Will the roles materialize at all? Or maybe it’s slow and steady until a glorious twilight.

“It’s a good story, my recent ‘renaissance,’ but it’s not true,” says Frank Langella, 69, crossing his legs and leaning back in the moment, an undeniably rich one that he’d like to downplay. Earlier this year he won a Tony award for his dazzling turn as a cryptic ex-President in Frost/Nixon (soon to be a movie). Now Langella has his strongest leading film role in years in Starting Out in the Evening, a quiet Gotham drama about a forgotten literary lion who seeks the possibility of a romantic rebirth.

“Actors who tell you there’s some kind of scheme or plan to it all are lying,” he continues. “There is no plan. This just happens to be a good year. A ‘renaissance’ would be what my character Leonard is having—if I’d been away for 25 years. I’ve always been here. And I will go on.”

There’s no reason to think otherwise. Langella, refreshingly straightforward, takes the long view of the working professional, an attitude furthered by his ties to the stage—famously in Broadway’s late-’70s Dracula (also a 1979 film), a role he had to leave for fear of being typecast. “I’m not that noble,” he says. “I’m not committed to the theater. I’m committed to my own growth as an actor. Any place I can grow and—I hate the word challenge—where I can terrify myself, is the gig. I mean, no actor can avoid crap. You just can’t. There are times when you’ve got two children in private schools and you’ve got to do a blockbuster. But that’s the work. And the minute you leave the table, you’re finished.”

Born in Bayonne, New Jersey, and a scrappy New Yorker since 1960 (“a six-room walk-up with two working fireplaces…for $70 a month”), Langella has a résumé that bulges with character experience. Recently, he’s been a courageous network exec in George Clooney’s Good Night, and Good Luck, as well as editor Perry White in last summer’s Superman Returns. Intellectual Leonard comes not only from Brian Morton’s 1998 novel and the film’s adaptation by Fred Parnes and director Andrew Wagner, but from Langella’s own neighbors. “I live on the Upper West Side,” he says, “so there are Leonards everywhere I go: Leonards in the elevator, Leonards on the corner. It’s easy for me to go into a market and choose one guy’s shirt and another guy’s cardigan and that funny hat someone else is wearing and that not particularly great scarf that he probably bought on Broadway somewhere. This is not a man who fusses about himself.”

And still, a kind of vanity drives Leonard—as it does Langella’s Nixon, obsessed with legacy—into the orbit of a younger up-and-comer. Here it’s Heather, a graduate student whose thesis research soon extends beyond the page. “Leonard’s ability with words has changed her life,” says Lauren Ambrose, transitioning from fame on Six Feet Under into the complicated role of flatterer and lust object. “But she too is very much into getting what she wants—for her career and her life.” Ambrose laughs. “She has boundary problems.”

Along with this already tough dramatic premise came the realities of low-budget independent filmmaking; both actors remember the extraordinarily tight three-week shooting schedule that fed their portrayals. “It was harrowing at times,” Ambrose says, “that taut cord between the actors. But it contributed to something good.” Recalls Langella, “I was changing clothes in men’s rooms at restaurants. But that kind of production is rewarding, and I don’t know why more actors don’t do it.”

Next up for the ever-busy Langella: a bizarre role in The Box, Richard Kelly’s horror follow-up to Southland Tales. “So completely different from Nixon,” the actor enthuses. “The new guy’s got half a face and he dresses in beautiful, elegantly cut clothes. Wow!” Here is Langella’s philosophy in action. “It doesn’t matter what the budget is,” he explains. “Seek out parts that show you off the best, that you respond to. Look into the director’s eyes. Make sure it’s somebody you can trust. And then look at your bank account—if you can afford it, do it. Don’t stand around. Too many actors tell me that they have a price. What are you? A vacuum cleaner?”

Starting Out in the Evening opens Friday; see Now Playing for venues.

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