Two-time Tony Award winner Frank Langella will portray Richard Nixon in “Frost/Nixon,” a London stage dramatization of the famous news interviews between British talk show host David Frost and President Richard Nixon which aired in 1971. The show opens in August at London’s Donmar Warehouse theater.
Langella currently stars in the blockbuster film, “Superman Returns.” He plays Perry White, the tough-talking editor of the Daily Planet newspaper and boss of journalists Lois Lane and Clark Kent.
The noted American stage and film actor recently spent time at the Nixon Presidential Library
studying for his RN portrayal. “I think it’s a great role, and the challenge is not to turn him into a black and white character. He was a complex man and I don’t want to play him as one note,” Langella said.
To help capture RN’s character and prepare for his role, Langella toured the Library galleries and Nixon birthplace with the Rev. John H. Taylor, Nixon Foundation executive director (pictured left with Langella). He then sat down to review President Nixon’s working materials from the Frost interviews. His research includes viewing hours of Nixon interviews and speeches at the Museum of Television & Radio in New York City and reading his friend Jonathan Aitken’s Nixon biography, Nixon: A Life; books by Dr. Henry A. Kissinger; and RN’s own autobiography, Memoirs.
“Nixon/Frost” opens August 10 and closes October 7, 2006.