Frank Langella
Frank A. Langella Jr. (/lænˈdʒɛlə/;[1] born January 1, 1938) is an American actor known for his roles on stage and screen. He eschewed the career of a traditional film star by making the stage the focal point of his career, appearing frequently on Broadway. He has received numerous accolades including four Tony Awards, a Drama Desk Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award as well as nominations for an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, an Emmy Award, and two Golden Globe Awards.
Frank Langella
January 1, 1938
Actor
1963–present
Whoopi Goldberg (1995–2000)
2
He has won four Tony Awards: two for Best Leading Actor in a Play for his performance as Richard Nixon in Peter Morgan's Frost/Nixon[2] and as André in Florian Zeller's The Father, and two for Best Featured Actor in a Play for his performances in Edward Albee's Seascape and Ivan Turgenev's Fortune's Fool. His other Tony-nominated roles were in Dracula in 1978, Match in 2004, and Man and Boy in 2012.
His reprisal of the Nixon role in the film production of Frost/Nixon directed by Ron Howard earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor.[3] Langella's other notable film roles include parts in Diary of a Mad Housewife (1970), Mel Brooks’s The Twelve Chairs (1970), Dracula (1979), Masters of the Universe (1987), Dave (1993), The Ninth Gate (1999), Good Night, and Good Luck (2005), Starting Out in the Evening (2007), Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010), Robot & Frank (2012), Noah (2014), Captain Fantastic (2016), and The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020).
He also played Supreme Court Justice Warren Burger in the HBO movie Muhammad Ali's Greatest Fight (2013) and Senator Richard Russell Jr. in All the Way (2016). Langella also had a recurring role as Gabriel, the KGB handler for the lead characters in the FX series The Americans (2013–2017) and Sebastian Piccirillo in the Showtime series Kidding (2018–2020).
Early life[edit]
Langella, an Italian American,[4] was born January 1, 1938,[5] in Bayonne, New Jersey,[6] the son of Angelina Barbato (b. 1915) and Frank A. Langella Sr. (1913–1991), a business executive who was president of the Bayonne Barrel and Drum Company.[7] Langella attended Washington Elementary School and Bayonne High School in Bayonne.[8] After the family moved to South Orange, New Jersey, he graduated from Columbia High School in the South Orange-Maplewood School District in 1955 and later graduated from Syracuse University in 1959 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in drama.[9]
Career[edit]
Early roles and breakthrough[edit]
Langella appeared off-Broadway (in The Immoralist at the Bouwerie Lane Theatre in 1963[10] and Robert Lowell's The Old Glory in 1965 among other shows) before he made his first foray onto a Broadway stage in New York in Federico García Lorca's Yerma at the Vivian Beaumont Theater, Lincoln Center, on December 8, 1966. He followed this role by appearing in William Gibson's A Cry of Players, playing a young, highly fictionalized William Shakespeare opposite Anne Bancroft in 1968.
Bancroft suggested Langella to her husband Mel Brooks, who cast him in a leading role in The Twelve Chairs (1970).[11] The same year, he also appeared in Frank Perry's Diary of a Mad Housewife, being nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Most Promising Newcomer. Langella won his first Tony Award for his performance in Edward Albee's Seascape in 1975 and was nominated again for what may have been the performance for which he was best known in the early part of his career: the title role of the 1977 Broadway production of Dracula. Despite his initial misgivings about continuing to play the role, he was persuaded to star opposite Laurence Olivier in the subsequent film version directed by John Badham.
Langella continued to juggle film and television with his stage work, playing Sherlock Holmes in a 1981 adaptation of William Gillette's play Sherlock Holmes. He repeated the role on Broadway in 1987 in Charles Marowitz's play Sherlock's Last Case. That same year, he portrayed the villain Skeletor in Masters of the Universe, one of his favorite parts.[12] In 1988, he co-starred in the film And God Created Woman. In 1982 Langella portrayed Antonio Salieri the Broadway production of Amadeus replacing Ian McKellen. During this time he also acted in Passion in 1983, Noël Coward's Design for Living in 1984, Arthur Miller's After the Fall in 1984, and David Rabe's Hurlyburly in 1985. He also portrayed Prospero in the revival of William Shakespeare revival The Tempest.
Established actor[edit]
In 1993, he made a three-episode appearance on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine as the devious Bajoran Minister Jaro Essa. That same year, he also starred in the political comedy Dave starring Kevin Kline and Sigourney Weaver. He also played a supporting role in the Ivan Reitman comedy Junior alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger, Danny DeVito, and Emma Thompson. In 1994, he narrated the American Masters documentary on Tennessee Williams. In 1996, Langella starred in the Broadway revival of August Strindberg's The Father. That same year, Langella starred in the comedy film Eddie, starring Whoopi Goldberg, with whom he was involved romantically until 2001. He also played Clare Quilty in the 1997 film adaptation of Lolita, starring Jeremy Irons and Melanie Griffith. In 1999, he starred opposite Johnny Depp in Roman Polanski's film The Ninth Gate.