April 18, 2002 Nobody's Fool Calmness translated to delicious stage success for actor Frank Langella By Mark Kennedy The Associated Press NEW YORK At 7:40 p.m. when most of Broadway is a noisy whir, Frank Langella is quiet and calm. Honking Limousines and taxis clog the streets, pedestrials cram the sidewalks and clumps of people sprint to their theatre seats. Langella is in no such rush. Wedged in a corner of a nearby restaurant, his plate of linguini and clams consumed, the actor is relaxed just 20 minutes before the curtain rises for his play, "Fortune's Fool." True, Langella doesn't go on until about 8:35 p.m. True the restaurant is only 2 doors away. But his demeanor speaks volumes about how the actor has thrived during almost four decades of stage work. "If I stay home all day preparing for being precious about myself, it's just a waste of time," he says. "If you get yourself all tied up in knots in preparation, you walk on stage with something the audience won't be able to identify with." By the time he eventually gets to the theatre, Langella needs only a few minutes to slip into his character, a Russian nobleman best described as an infamous, fatuous fop. The play, by Ivan Turgenev, is a mod-19th century look at class, honor and a festering family secret. Langella plays a nosy neighbor who takes great joy in verbally torturing his prey, often the title character, played by Alan Bates. It is necessary for me every night to bring out the very worst in my nature. The pettiest, meanest, most duplicitous part of me," Langella says. Delicious parts are no stranger to Langella, who has bitten into several meaty parts, including Sherlock Holmes, Zorro, Leonardo DaVinci, Valmont, Shakespeare, and of course, Dracula, which he brought to stage in 1977 and reprised on film in 1979. Langella, 62, who many may recall in his role as the malevolent Chief of Staff Bob Alexander in Ivan Reitman's film "Dave," says he is bored by traditional heroic roles. So rather than portraying Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Langella played his foil, Salieri. And instead of the hero Christian in "Cyrano de Bergerac," he played the long-nosed title character. "I've really never been a regular-guy leading man. I've always been offbeat," he says. "I find that when I'm in the middle of it, I', always finding a quirk, a word or two, a way to do it away from the traditional." Much of his career has been tied to his physical presence: a pair of oversized eyes, a wide mouth, a stature that soars over 6 feet and a booming voice perfect for reaching the back row. "People never think of me as playing a loser or a wimp or a victim or vulnerable," he says. "I'm not often offered those kinds of roles. People, I guess, wouldn't believe me." Arthur Penn, who directed "Fortune's Fool," says he's impressed by Langella's sheer intensity. "He has a strength and a strong individual sense of what he wants to do and be and be presumed," Penn says. Raised in New Jersey, Langella recalls hopping a bus as a teenager to wander the streets around New York's West 40's, fantasizing that one day his name would grace Broadway's marquees. "I would usually stop around 50th street," he says. "Then I'd get on a bus and go home, because I really believed that I'd fall off the edge of New York City." After regional roles, Langella made his Broadway debut as a talking lizard in Edward Albee's "Seascape," winning a Tony for best supporting actor. He made his film debut in Mel Brooks' "The Twelve Chairs" in 1970. Since then, he says, his career has ebbed and flowed, as he evolved from an arrogant leading actor into something else. "Now I am an arrogant character actor," he says with a mischievous smile. "Before I did "Dave," my career was very cold and very uneventful for a very long time," he says. "That's never bothered me because the hits don't last. So I'm assuming the bad times don't last either." These days, Broadway is a place of warm memories. He'll bump into John Lithgow, now starring in "Sweet Smell of Success," and the two wil swap stories about sharing dressing rooms in the old days. Or he'll kid Kate Burton, now starring across the street in "The Elephant Man," about helping launch her career by giving her a walk-on role in his adaptation of "Cyrano." "It's a wonderful feeling to be an integral part of that fraternity of people," he says. "To be still doing it and doing things I like means I'm a lucky guy." Along the way, though, Langella has developed little patience for something Broadway often produces: actors who get too self-important about their work -- or too angst-ridden. "I think there's too much silliness," he says. "Too many actors bring their own neuroses on stage, wallowing in them, and assume it's interesting. It's not. One actor said, 'It took me six months to get over a part.' Well, if it took you six months to get over it, you've done it wrong. You've done it in a self-indulgent way. "If I don't convince you that I am the character -- excite you, make you laugh and surprise you -- I haven't succeeded. And I do all that in spite of my neuroses, not because of them." In a few minutes Langella will rise from his restaurant seat, yank on a baseball cap, and stride toward the stage door of "Fortune's Fool." He'll arrive while most of the audience already is patiently sitting in their seats. And he won't sweat it a bit. ## Frank Langella portrays a Russian nobleman in "Fortune's Fool." The adaptation of a play by Ivan Turgenev opened April 2 at Broadway's Music Box Theatre.