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Quick Facts
- NAME: Frank Langella
- OCCUPATION: Actor
- BIRTH DATE: c. January 01, 1938
- EDUCATION: Syracuse University
- PLACE OF BIRTH: Bayonne, New Jersey
Best Known For
Actor Frank Langella portrayed Richard Nixon in the Broadway and film version of Frost/Nixon. He won a Tony Award and an Oscar nomination.
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Play NowFrank Langella. (2013). The Biography Channel website. Retrieved 03:31, May 18, 2013, from http://www.biography.com/people/frank-langella-413152.
Frank Langella. [Internet]. 2013. The Biography Channel website. Available from: http://www.biography.com/people/frank-langella-413152 [Accessed 18 May 2013].
"Frank Langella." 2013. The Biography Channel website. May 18 2013, 03:31 http://www.biography.com/people/frank-langella-413152.
"Frank Langella," The Biography Channel website, 2013, http://www.biography.com/people/frank-langella-413152 [accessed May 18, 2013].
"Frank Langella," The Biography Channel website, http://www.biography.com/people/frank-langella-413152 (accessed May 18, 2013).
Frank Langella [Internet]. The Biography Channel website; 2013 [cited 2013 May 18] Available from: http://www.biography.com/people/frank-langella-413152.
Frank Langella, http://www.biography.com/people/frank-langella-413152 (last visited May 18, 2013).
Frank Langella. The Biography Channel website. 2013. Available at: http://www.biography.com/people/frank-langella-413152. Accessed May 18, 2013.
Synopsis
Born Jan. 1, 1938 in Bayonne, New Jersey, Frank Langella pursued acting from an early age. After college he moved to New York City. In 1963, he had his off-Broadway stage debut in The Immoralist. He played a variety of Broadway roles, but playing Richard Nixon in Frost/Nixon changed his career. He won a Tony and Ron Howard directed him in the film version in 2008.
Early Career
Actor, director, producer. Born on January 1, 1938, in Bayonne, New Jersey. (Some sources give 1940 as his birth year.) From an early age, Langella had an interest in becoming an actor. He studied acting at Syracuse University, then moved to New York City. While in New York, Langella joined the Lincoln Center Repertory Company where he studied his craft with the likes of Elia Kazan. He made his stage debut in an off-Broadway production of The Immoralist in 1963. Langella soon appeared in a string of productions, earning a 1966 OBIE Award for his performances in Good Day and The White Devil.
On Broadway
On Broadway, Langella had a role in William Gibson's A Cry of Players, which netted him the 1969 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Performance. As his star continued to rise, Langella got his first taste of film success with 1970’s Diary of a Mad Housewife. Carrie Snodgress starred as the title character—playing a woman bullied by both her husband and her demanding daughters—who finds escape in her affair with a writer (played by Langella). Langella received critical praise for his performance in the drama. Trying his hand at lighter fare, Langella next starred in the Mel Brooks comedy, The Twelve Chairs (1970), as a Russian con man.
Returning to Broadway in 1975, Langella received accolades for his work in Edward Albee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play Seascape. The play explores the interaction between two couples—a mature human couple and a pair of lizards. As Leslie the lizard, Langella won his first Tony Award and his second Drama Desk Award. Langella next pursued another unusual stage role, playing the title character in Dracula. This 1977 production featured set and costume design by famed illustrator Edward Gorey. Two years later, Langella starred in the film adaptation, which helped make him a popular sex symbol. The cast also included Laurence Olivier, Donald Pleasence, and Kate Nelligan.
On the Big Screen
Langella earned favorable reviews for his next film effort, Those Lips, Those Eyes (1980), in which he played a mediocre veteran stage actor. Critic Roger Ebert described him as “appealingly vulnerable and egotistical as the theater’s star performer, always scanning the audience for Broadway talent scouts.” He then appeared in Sphinx (1981), an adaptation of the popular Robin Cook novel by the same name. Unfortunately the film proved to be a critical and commercial disappointment.
Focusing mostly on theatrical work, Langella played a broad range of characters in the 1980s.
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