New Jersey Savvy Living, Vol. 8, No. 2, March/April 2004, p. 50-54

"Langella & Liotta:  A Prefect Match" - 
One of Broadway's Most Anticipated New Dramas Stars 
Two Acclaimed Actors (Who Just Happen To Be Jersey Guys) 
by Brian Scott Lipton

Frank Langella - "A Man of the 21st Century"

Like Ray Liotta, Frank Langella loved his childhood in 
New Jersey.  "Bayonne was a lovely place to grow up.  
It still is," says the actor, whose plummy accent is sometimes
 mistaken for British.

Like Liotta, he caught the acting bug in school.  At age 11, 
he played an 85-year old man.  And like his co-star, Langella 
spent some of his teenage years visiting the Bug Apple. 
"I would save my money and take the bus in from Journal Square 
by myself-I would never tell anyone I was going-and just walk 
around and look at all the marquees on the theaters.  I don't think 
I even walked north of 50th Street," he recalls.  "But I never 
saw any shows.  Theater tickets were well beyond my means, and 
I was perfectly happy just imagining what was going on the inside."

But one day, around the time he was 16 or 17-by which pint the 
family had moved to South Orange-Langella finally took the plunge.  
"I went to see Rosalind Russell in Auntie Mame at the Broadhurst. 
 And when she came sailing down those stairs, I thought, 
'That's for me,'" he says.  "And when I did Amadeus at the same 
theater in 1980, I knew I had really achieved my dream."

Actually, Langella found quick success in the theater just a couple 
of years after graduating from Syracuse University and moving to 
New York.  He joined the Lincoln Center theater program in 1961 
and studied with the legendary Elia Kazan.  By the mid-1960's, he 
had earned three OBIE Awards, followed by his first Drama Desk 
award in 1969 for A Cry of Players, and his first Tony in 1975, for 
his role as a lizard in Edward Albee's Seascape.

"I love to get awards, but they don't identify me," says Langella.  
"When I was younger, I thought it meant that I had arrived, that it 
was proof I was a good actor.  Now I try to put them away the next 
day and learn my lines."

Many thought he would win Tony number two for Dracula, the 1977 
Broadway smash in which he triumphed as the very sexy vampire.  
Although he lost to Barnard Hughes-and would finally earn his second 
statuette in 2002 for Fortune's Fool-the show ignited his stage career.  
"The stage is where I do my finest work.  It's really where 
I was meant to be," he says.

Langella knew he'd be spending 2004 on stage-he just didn't know 
it would be in Match.  First, he committed to the Public Theater production 
of the new Kander and Ebb musical The Visit opposite Chita Rivera, 
but it was cancelled at the eleventh hour for lack of funding.  Then he 
signed on to star off-Broadway opposite Isabella Rossellini in Terrance 
McNally's new play The Stendahl Syndrome.  But when destiny called, 
the plans were hastily changed.

"You see, Stephen had sent me Match two years ago, and I stayed with 
it through three workshops.  Then when it was supposed to come to 
Broadway, they were going to go with another actor.  But things didn't 
work out with him and the play came back to me.  It's been such an odd 
year in terms of things coming and going.  I've just had to learn to accept 
that the wheel turns the way it wants to turn," he says.  "I teach master 
classes now, and one of the things I try to make my students understand 
is that nothing is infinite.  Good doesn't last, and neither does bad.  You 
just have to roll with the punches."

Langella could not be happier that the wheel has turned the way it has.  
"I think Match is one of the best written plays I've ever read, and I knew 
that within five pages.  Stephen has such a fresh voice, and he writes so 
viscerally," he says.   "It's also important to me that it's a new play.  I 
really want to do new plays.  Without realizing it, I've done nothing but 
play men from other periods-Present Laughter, The Father, Cyrano de 
Bergerac and Fortune's Fool-for the past 20 years.  I want to be a man 
of the 21st century, and I am so excited that someone else wants me to 
do that too."

Plus there's an added bonus.  "I don't ever have to change costumes.  
I'm just in a T-shirt and shorts" he says laughing.  "It will be such a relief 
not to have worry about keeping my collar high or tying my boots."

Langella is remarkably reticent about his personal life-he has long been 
divorced from his wife of 18 years, Ruth Weil, and has two children-but he 
swears his life is far from all work and no play.

"My life is very full.  In fact, I try to make it more complicated so 
that my work will be better," he says.  "When you get to the theater, 
if you have had a day full of life, you can bring it to the stage.  If you 
do nothing but sip tea, then you're going to be a very dull actor."