National Corporate Theatre Fund Gala
The Plaza Hotel
June 10th, 2002

Billy Crudup
Introductory Remarks

It is said we can judge a man by the company he keeps.  Listen to just some of the 
writers, directors and actors Frank Langella has kept company with in over 75 plays 
and 30 films: 

The writers: Edward Albee, Arthur Miller, Noel Coward, Sam Shepherd, Peter Schaffer, 
Tennessee Williams, plus classics by Turgenev, Strindberg, Shaw, Chekov, Ibsen, Shakespeare, 
Moliere.  On and on it goes.  

The directors: George C. Scott, Sir Peter Hall, Arthur Penn, Roman Polanski, Mel Brooks, 
Adrian Lyne, Ridley Scott, Mike Nichols, Susan Stroman. 

The actors: Laurence Olivier, Gerard Depardieu, Anne Bancroft, Johnny Depp, Faye Dunaway,
 Kevin Kline, Robert Mitchum, Deborah Kerr, Laurence Fishburne, Emma Thompson, Diane 
Wiest and Alan Bates.  

Frank is celebrating his 40th year as a professional actor this season.  And what a way to
 celebrate!  He has won his second Tony Award, his fifth Drama Desk Award and the Outer 
Critics Circle Award for his hilarious and frightening "fop" in this season's Fortune's Fool 
at the Music Box Theatre.  

Add to that: Three Obies, The Drama League Award, a half a dozen Film & Theatre Critics
awards, Emmy & Golden Globe nominations and you have one of America's most revered 
actors. There's no more room on the mantle.  

And his walls are lined with no less than twelve - count them - twelve caricatures by the
fabled Al Hirshfeld.

There is virtually no other American actor working today who possesses Frank's versatility, 
power and longevity.  He has never seemed to be an actor in the business of acting but rather
in the profession of acting.  And it is because he holds his profession in such high regard that 
we honor him tonight.  

It is a profound pleasure for me to present this year's Career Achievement Award to him.  
Ladies and Gentlement, to coin a phrase from one of his greatest successes, "Dracula," 
I give you Mr. Frank Langella; "The King of his Kind."