>> from our studios in new york city, this is "charlie rose." ♪ >> it would be so good to go back.

the hunger in my belly is so -- boils down toall watergate. >> frank langella is here, he once said "i like monsters, i like mystery men." langella made a habit of playing both. in 1979, he appeared as a seductive count dracula opposite lawrence olivier, 30 years later he portrayed an aging richard nixon in frost/nixon and now takes on the play that has been called too huge for the stage. "king lear." he appeared in the title role of shakespeare's epic tragedy at the brooklyn school of music through february 9th. i am pleased to call him a friend and pleased to have him back at this table. >> good to be here. >> good to see you and having seen the performance i agree with all of those critics who are raving about what you brought to it. so i want to know, what have you brought to this role and what

has this role brought to you? >> well, i think one of the first things i brought to it is fear of death which i never had before in any, in any of the decades of my life and at 76 if you don't begin to think about it, you are nuts. so when i read the play, i thought, okay, i am closer to the end than to the beginning, what is it about this man i most want to investigate? and it was the quality in me that i don't particularly like. it is very much in him and very much in a lot of people, which is existing for your metaphorical crown, whatever it is. whether it is your money or your success or your sex appeal or your power, most of us live behind a mask. a persona that is not really just being a poor and naked wretch, as shakespeare calls him and we walk around carrying this persona. it happens when you are carrying a crown, you are carrying a

crown that is easier to see. so i read it seriously for the first time when i was 73, 74, when it was first brought up to me. and i thought, oh, he is not senile, he is not senile at all, he is not going mad, that is too easy. because if he is going mad, he can't take response for his journey, he is, it is an extraordinary journey, it is finding his mind, not losing it. he says to his daughters, i just don't want to be king anymore, although i know i am and i don't want to have to worry about paying the bills. i don't want to have to do anything except just have a good time at the end of my life, but by the way, i am still your father. i am still king and you are still going to treat me that way and that was the -- that was the impetus for me to want to fake -- take the part. >> okay. lots of questions coming out of that, first of all let's talk a bit about king lear, 1603 or 1604, almost two versions of it, people kind of merge them together or prefer the former in many cases.

it is the story of a king who as you just said is coming to the end and he wants to decide which daughter. >> he wanted to decide which daughter, he knows which daughter. >> he loves one. >> he loves the youngest. >> and she doesn't tell him >> she doesn't say, you are the best dad in the world, i love you because you are my father and he says, what? you want me to give you a big piece of land, the other two just told me how great i am and like an idiot he believes them and the honest one says, all i care about is you and nothing else. i don't care that you are king, i don't care what you have to give me and he can't handle it. >> most people who have written about this, most, say it is about the descent into madness and you don't buy it. >> no, i do buy it, what i don't buy is that he enters on his way

to madness, because that to me is a great cheat. what i -- what i think and hope is different about my lear, because i watched all the others before, most of the leers i watch gave a little hint of some kind of dementia as they started and i thought, well, if -- i am repeating myself, but if you are already there, what are you going to learn from what has happened? the thing tragic about him to my mind and the thing that is great is he doesn't say when he realizes he is being rejected by the daughters he thought loved him. he doesn't say okay i am going to take my kingdom back now and start a war and go out and get my soldiers i want to be back on the throne. he says, oh, i have taken too little care of this, poor naked wretches why haven't i noticed you before, why haven't i ever

noticed your humanity and the brilliant speech, unaccommodated man is nothing but a poor bear forked animal, well that's all we all are, take your suits off and take my stage away. >> no television camera. >> no television cameras, we are just two guys, you know, with various degrees of -- >> back to autobiography, yours. you went through a very interesting time in which you were the young, handsome matinee island -- matinee idol. >> sometimes matinee island. >> matinee island occasionally. you had all of the privileges of stardom, and then it was over. >> yes. >> and you went into a kind of searching. you made certain decisions. and then you came back as a great character actor, but do you find, i would have thought that you already had gone through this sense of who you were at that time rather than in your 70's. >> that is a great question.

look, there are seasons in our lives when you are in your 20's and 30's and 40s and your 50's. you identify yourself through a lot of things you no longer can identify yourself in your 70's. and your youth, it is your sexual prowess. if you do very well, you are a king, if you do very bad, you are a poor naked wretch. and the fact is you are neither, and then it changes, and then it becomes how famous am i, what did i win? who said yes, who said no, where am i not accepted? because you are young you think you have forever, think way and you kind of push away this revelation so i kept pushing the it away, we have so many toys until we get old. we really do and the saddest people in my generation are these people, they are the saddest because i know that they don't have -- and this isn't hubris, they don't have the courage or not pushed up against

the wall the way i was to look and say, i better figure this out or i am going to find myself under a surgeon's knife or continuing to do what i have always done which i don't want to do, but at the same time you -- don't want to do. >> but at the same time you decided not to make cheap choices, too. >> yes. >> you decided to stick to those kinds of things which have an integrity in them. >> i very - >> there were fewer of them and more difficult. >> it wasn't always integrity, it is arrogance. i was born of insecurity. i just decided i wasn't going to run with the pack, i was going to charge my own course, i wasn't going to do what agents told me to do.

i wasn't going to do a tv series and play one character for a number of years, but that was a combination of arrogance and, you know, the other side of arrogance is insecurity. so it was a combination of both of those things. i just -- the one thing i think i did know always is that i was going to carve my own path, whatever it might be, success or failure, and i have had a lot of both, it would be my path. >> where are you now? >> far more at ease, far more, i would think, contemplative and far more -- a friend of mine said you are in desperate need of humbling and i think at that time he was right. >> yes. and today you are desperately in need of? >> further -- i don't think i have conquered lear so to be specific at the moment. if you asked me today what i am in need of, i am need of feeling -- peeling this onion to a deeper more profound place i yet haven't been able to go, i am happy for the reception but i know i haven't gone where i want to go with this character. i haven't taken him there so - >> and so if i go back on

february 9th, i may see a very different lear? >> yes. i don't play it -- i said this in an interview, i don't play this part the same every night and you can look at that in two ways. you say, oh, that is unprofessional or you say what i really believe which is what you owe an audience when you walk out is immediacy. you owe them that more than anything else. you owe them the sense that i am looking out for you this minute, this second and i have never said this before, and this look or this moment is a revelation to me, and then they lead -- lean forward and say my god i am in the room with the man at the moment and then every single night within a framework of integrity, you don't suddenly leave the stage. and leave your acting you say

well you are choosing your lines but within that you can find different -- i never fall in a love with a line reading or never fall in love with a laugh, i get it on a tuesday and wednesday it goes away. and also, i try to bring on stage some of my complicated day and rather than fight the day, i embrace it. >> what does that mean? >> i will give you a good example. an immediate one is yesterday i was in the country, and i got into the back of a car and i drove to new york and it took three hours through a snowstorm, i got to my apartment, dropped my bag and took two more hours to get to the theatre and then when i got there, my dresser was hung up on bus somewhere so i had someone who didn't know how how to do the changes. so i had to go into the wings and thought to myself and i had to teach her how to do them as i was doing them, and i walked to my entrance thinking there is nothing i want to do less than this. but the difference is if you are a programmed actor and an actor that says i have got my performance, it is set, i know what i am going to do, i can override these difficulties, you

miss something so thrilling, which is the frustration of the ride, the anger, the tired, the fatigue, the resistance and you find a way to make a little mud pie. call it art if you want to, and bring on with you the day, and that doesn't mean that you are not being faithful to the king and it doesn't mean you are not being faithful to the set or the or your other actors, it just means every night you are bringing the more of you and more chances for them to change in another way and out of it you find incredible revelations. you can take a speech which you have done for 40 performances at the top of your lungs and suddenly take it somewhere else. >> where do you put king lear in the canon? >> whose canon? >> shakespeare's? >> oh, i don't think i am educated enough about him to say that but i will say that it is probably the most brilliant and ridiculous play i have ever been in. >> and you resisted it because you weren't ready to face it or because you weren't particularly intrigued by it?

>> no, i resisted it in my younger years. first of all i didn't want to play anybody this old but more than that and all the clichés -- he is off stage for a long time and what will i do in my dressing room and all of that sort of stuff. the play isn't one play. it is 12, one-act plays and if you play it, you play each scene in and of itself you are fine. if you try to psychologically link this man from one scene to other, you will sink. you can't because shakespeare has things happen to him off camera, off stage that are impossible to link psychologically. >> i think with a.c. bradley a victorian critic says king lear is a play too huge for the stage. you don't buy that, do you? >> no. >> at all?

>> people have said it to me, too. >> well, people also say when you are off stage it is not the same play. >> well, of course as king lear that would be true of any actor playing it. it is, of course that is true it is one of the greatest parts ever written and the most impossible and unconquerable. >> you looked at a whole series of actors who played lear and you find it difficult for what reason? >> well, i did it to steal from things i like or things i never thought i could do and there is one whole section in one hear -- and one i head that i loved that i can't do on stage because it is not a movie, i did it because i wanted to avoid what i thought might become traps that i would want another actor fall into and work his way out of or not. and i did it because i am hungry for information on anything i do.

>> me, too. >> nixon, i read and read and watched and watched and with lear i did that too. >> i think information frees you. >> i do, too. >> i really do it allows you spontaneity and go wherever you want to go, it gives you an architecture so that you can allow freedom to reign. >> it is a fascinating subject because most people think i have to be inspired this is something i talk to the young artist when i do master classes, one of the actors i was working with said as we were leaving the stage i didn't enjoy the scene tonight, i didn't feel good. and i stopped her in the dark and i said, it is not for you to enjoy. it is for them to enjoy. it doesn't matter what you feel. >> exactly. >> it only matters that you do something so if you work hard, if you -- as you do, if you do your research, if you have three rules, learn the lines, know what they mean, mean them when you say them. it is pretty basic. >> exactly. >> but if you do, then inspiration comes to you. you walk out and something is stirring in you that you can barely breathe, you are so excited. it is like a new lover in a way.

and you think, this is the first time, what am i going to do? i have done this act before but now there is something different, something is happening and then it is over and you go into your dressing room and say i don't know why it happened, i don't understand it and i can't bottle it. i can't manufacture it. but i have done all the basic work, so by doing the basic work i am then free at that moment, you know what i mean? >> yes, it is a famous story as you know about lawrence olivier. he entered a performance and went backstage and roddy mcdowell went backstage and said, you know, larry this was fantastic. >> yes. >> never seen anything like it, and he said, you know, i know but i don't know how i did it. >> well, i have had this conversation most -- more with british actors than americans. because, because to me, there is a tremendous importance to knowing every word you say.

doing the basic work and the digging and digging and digging and then there is an even greater importance which is when you walk to the wings, just before you go on, you forget all that. and you leap empty, leap empty handed into the void and you just jump. and sometimes british actors and i have a difference of opinion, not sometimes a lot of times we have a difference of opinion. what is wonderful about the company that i am in is that most of them have sort of come around and said you know just because he was reading it differently doesn't mean anything more than he wants to excite me in a different way. and they start coming back with it, and then you are all in the dark alone for the night, why shouldn't it be wonderful that time as opposed to a repetition of something you did the night before? >> before we go further i want to show you this. this is a montage of famous

lears. >> how nice of you to do there for me. [laughter] >> it is a scene -- >> should i look? >> of course, you should. >> i have all the hubris in the world. >> of course you do. i didn't worry about that for a second. this is where he has just been told they won't permit him any attendants so it is one more pulling away his power. >> okay. >> and here it is. leap.eason not to man's life is -- you want me to go to war. scarcely keeps me warm. >> oh, heavens. give me patience, i need, you see me here, a poor old man, full of grief, wretched.

if it be you that serves my daughter's hearts against me, it is too much to bear it, take me! >> my man's cheeks, now. unnatural! i will have such revenge on you both that all the world shall -- so be the terrors of the earth. i won't weep. this heart shall break, oh, how but it just goes to show you how -- shall break. >> it just goes to show you how many ways you can do that speech

and it is very interesting that speech you chose, because only five days ago i stopped doing it the way i was doing it and realized there is another way to go. so, i totally changed the reading of that. >> from what to what? >> well, i did it with great bombast. i mean, i went -- and i went to a big place, and then of course i have to follow that with the storm scene. and then i realized, the first one, orson welles, of the intelligence of it and the softness of it and the last chance of it, for a while i may change my mind. but the last chance of saying, girls, please, don't talk about me, you have a beautiful dress on, don't. i need you. i need you. so when i do it now without this, it creates a vulnerability in lear i had missed and now it is there, and who knows, tonight

there might be something else. >> i think you have answered this. the question opens with the division. he is just meeting with his daughters and interesting, you come in, you see not only in what you wear and the crown and the costume and how you change in terms of becoming naked, it also changes in terms of -- even from the beginning there is a certain burden of the crown. so there is a stoop in your walk as you come out. in the end, it is almost like something is coming back into you. >> yes, people have told me i get younger in the play. and that is purposeful. >> that's what? >> he is going. i mean, you can talk about this play and also you can talk about this time of life, since i am in it, i would like to. i don't know whether i have ever talked to you about this on the air before. i may have, but i will say it again.

the eastern belief is when you are born you are like a pure little white box and you are empty. and in western life as we go grow older in our society, we get a little tremble or a little fear or anxiety and so we take something that we think we need and we put it in the box, like a drink, a partner, money, game, -- fame, whatever. and as we are growing older the box is heavier and heavier with everything we have put into it that we think we need to exist. eastern philosophy says when you feel anxiety, when you feel a tremble, don't take a valium, don't take a drink. throw something out of your box, so that when you come to your last moments on earth or your last years, if you are lucky enough not to be in a coma or infirmed in some way, you will go wherever we are going to go with a degree of lightness, to

go back to where you asked me where i am now in my life. that's where i am. i am emptying my box. i am not doing it as well as i would like to. i still go back to old habits and i still look for affirmation in ways i no longer really do need it or want it. but what i am trying to do now is say, look, at all the things i did and needed and used in order to call myself a man. i don't need any of them. i now just to be a man on the planet and as i am getting closer to the end, i would like to be able to not be so burdened so thank you for noticing. that is part of what i do in the beginning is bring him in with this burden and in spite of himself as one more -- i mean, this man rails for a very long time, rails and rails and rails. he can't even hear the truth when it is being spoken to him. he can't hear it. and then suddenly there is a point in the play when he begins

to realize. i have taken too little care of this, as i said, you know, and he decides to basically become a human being and the greatest of all tragedy happens which is the one creature who loved him for himself died in his arms. >> you know who was fascinated by that was freud. >> yes. >> how do you see the final scene? >> well, if you had anyone here who was in rehearsal with me you would have said he sees the final scene 1,472 ways, which is however many rehearsals we have had. >> really? >> i started that final scene, the first day i ever did it, i came to the show fully memorized because i was so terrified, but the first day i did it. >> stop. i came the first day of rehearsal fully memorized because i was so terrified. >> yes. >> see, i think that is wonderful. wonderful, because it means you are alive, it is the greatest thing about life to me, you

know, is obviously love and work, you know, and love has to do with family and all of those things. work has to do with something that is larger than you are. >> and you can argue that those words can have different billing. >> exactly. >> some men do. >> right, right, right. >> what does the fool mean to the king in this play? >> well, he is conscience. >> yes. >> he is his conscience and, you know, you never, you never really want to hear -- a great friend of mine, an actress never attack anybody's defense for living. they don't want to hear it. i was -- >> their defense for living? >> defense for living, the

reason they are doing what they are doing. oh, the reason they are where they are. >> when was younger i was impossible. but among -- among the many things i was impossible about i would turn and say but i am right, don't you understand i am and right had nothing to do with it, i would try to make somebody see something and you can't. >> it is like i told you so. >> you can only come to it when you are ready to come to it. >> i mean part of this also, i mean it is this idea of what wisdom brings to you, what is wisdom brings to you, what is it and what does it bring to you? and how do you define the coming of wisdom, and so in the end, the wisdom that king lear find is or does he find it and does he know it? >> no, no, he finds it. >> one of my most beautiful -- not my, but one of the beautiful things in the play, it is one of my most beautiful moments.

oh, i made a freudian slip last night i have to tell you. it is worth its weight in gold one of the host beautiful speeches in the play and i will tell you my misstep. he says to his daughter let's go to prison and be along and we will sing and laugh and play, we will just play and just be alone by ourselves and of course she is killed a little later the happiness of it. and i describe this night which is so complicated from the storm and everything and i thought i was okay, under par but raise -- racing around and freud is always there and i have a line and i turn and say go you and tell my daughter i would speak with her and i said with complete conviction, go, you, and tell my daughter i would sleep with her. >> explain that to me, then. >> well, this particular - >> what was that freudian slip? this is what i mean. what i mean is, it is both a

horrible and wonderful thing, because something in my unconscious is working i guess. i don't ever usually do things like that. i am pretty good about that sort of thing but the word came out clear as a bell and i thought, and right after i said it i didn't look in the eye of any other actor on stage because i knew we would all laugh but in the wings it became the joke. >> so what does he find and tell me the sense of back to where he is at the end, he finally what is the wisdom? that he finally gets? that, in fact he does have something, even though he lost something? >> i think he find the wisdom -- >> looking for. >> looking for myself but i think what it is really, truly, you mean all i have to do all i have to do all i have to do is stand here naked in front of you without my crown, without my three-piece suit, without my ball gown, if i am a woman.

without my oscar, without my tony, all i have to do is wake up in the morning, stand there naked before you and you will love me? most of us don't want to believe that. >> do you believe it yet? >> now i do. >> you do? because of lear? >> yes. he has taken a man who like most men are different than women, women have it in a different way, but he has taken me by the hand and said it is time for you. >> really? >> to drop your -- the things you think you need, you don't need them. now, meanwhile, they are there and i call on them, i need them, i need them, i need them in my profession, but they must not any longer identify me. i must not think, because i mean -- i won something, i mean something. the happenstance is, i happen to win something. but i need something.

>> absolutely. >> and those who love me. >> understand that. >> love me and my own daughter loves me for that, from the moment she was born. ridiculously emotional i am going to get from the moment she was born she has only ever loved her dad for the fact that i am her dad. she doesn't -- yes, you are good on the stage. >> and the only person who does that? >> i don't know. i don't know, she is my daughter so i can say it about her. >> when you look back now, nixon meant something to you too, didn't he? >> yes. >> what did he teach you? >> when you are caught, admit it. >> ah. >> when you are caught, don't say, all right, i am going to say this, i promise myself i wouldn't, but i think beyonce is one of the greatest performers that ever lived and i think she should have risked it at the inauguration, because that is what great artists do too.

>> i think so, too. >> risk it. >> that is a small example to me. >> i want -- and in public i will probably never meet the lady but if i did i said when you are my age you are going to be sitting with your grandkids on your lap and going to say i sang for the president and watch it and you are going to know you faked it. so what if you went flat, so what if you just missed a note, risk it. that's what being -- she is a great artist, that is what being aspiring to greatness is about, risk. >> the pursuit of excellence. >> yes, just jump and some nights you are terrible. >> right. >> and some nights you are terrible and some nights -- but if you don't risk you will never get there. >> i think risk and failure are central to a genuinely real life, risk and failure. >> yes. >> because there is no perfect life and no perfect man and no perfect experience, and so, therefore, that means that, you know, and sometimes your risks

should exceed your grasp. >> say that to a 13-year-old boy who can't walk across the gym who can't ask the girl to a dance. what is the worse thing that can happen? she will say no and sometimes the yes is the worst result. it is better to get the no. >> so in preparation for this, just because it is such a magnificent role and magnificent performance, and you, obviously, nailed it, how did you prepare? is it mental or is it physical? >> i didn't nail it. >> you haven't gotten it? >> not by my standards, i haven't nailed it. >> in what ways have you not failed it? >> i am not sufficiently destroyed. i am not sufficiently ravaged at the end of this play. i don't mean acting wise, and i don't even mean personal itself, self flagellation, i want to go deeper and deeper into the man's unbelievable loss that kind of -- now it may be because i

haven't had a loss like that, but i haven't -- in and nailing it for me means, i don't think i ever nail anything because i never really think -- >> it is never perfect. >> no, i never think that is it. i am always somewhat dissatisfied, so, okay, let's accept the fact i don't think i have failed it. >> fair enough. do you think you will? >> no. >> in a couple of weeks here, get with it. go home and practice, practice, practice. >> i know the day i will think i nailed it is the day i wake up in the morning look in the mirror and say, boy how am i going to comb this full hair of, -- full head of hair today and come back to bed. and i will think i am -- no, i will never nail it as an actor, i don't want to. ♪

>> what do you tell actors in the master classes you

occasionally teach? >> well, i tell them the three things -- >> you tell them risk? >> yes. and also i write a word on a piece of paper and i put it in my pocket and at this end of the session i say, i have a word in my pocket. if you are not able to do this word you will not succeed in life, in work, in anything. and no one ever gets the word. but the three things i say are, going back to preparation, learn the lines, but learn them like you know your fingers, your toes. >> exactly. >> learn them so that no matter what is coming at you on a bus, this you can say them in a car accident, then. >> then, you own them. >> know what they mean, which with shakespeare takes another whole period of time, what does this, thou, thee mean and why does he want me to go there and then the next big step, mean them when you say them.

and that is an enormous jump, just being able to trust yourself enough to walk out and say the lines you have learned meaning every word which goes back to the first thing i talked about, about owing an audience immediacy, say them fresh every time. >> i think something interesting here about the idea that, and maybe, maybe lear shouldn't have found anything, because you are saying you never find perfection, you never get it quite right, you always wish you could be better. i have asked often, great artists, was there one picture, one moment in which, olivier moment we talked about, you know, and often they will sit and think it is nevermore than one or two where they thought i just, "nailed it." >> yes. i have had -- but again, they are extraordinary.

there is -- yes. there is a look, alan ladd was a very well-known actor when he was young he went into a bar after a day's shooting and all ask, what diduld you do today? and he said i think i did a really good look, i did a good reaction and he didn't mean it he didn't mean it facetiously, sometimes you can do that and there are several moments in films where i think i don't know that i could have done that any better than that time and sometimes on stage i think, well, boy -- but then i let it go, i just let it go out the window. >> you talk about a conversation i think with marlon brando in which he basically turned down a role that you took which was playing young william shakespeare, right. >> uh-huh. >> and you, brando said, i don't want to do this because i want to go be a movie actor, right. >> a movie star. >> movie star, more important. more interesting.

did you ever say that i want, most of all, because of my looks, because of my talent to be a movie star? >> no. >> you never did? >> no. because i wanted something -- i wanted something so much more unattainable and painful and difficult in my growing up that idea of being a movie star. i was alone in an attic memorizing john gielgud speeches from "richard iii" because i wanted to be loved, and most young actors if they are honest will tell you why's why they wanted to be actors. the people below the attic didn't know me, didn't know who i was, didn't love me for myself, it was -- i grew up in a very volatile italian family where everybody was out doing mad things. and i was a very sensitive kid with big glasses and awkward and shy, so i was up there somehow i saw this movie and i saw these speeches and i thought, oh if i

could do that maybe someone will love me. now that puts me among millions of people. i am not singling myself out. that is an absolutely common thing. it is just that most actors forget that was the initial reason -- it was to be validated, it was to be loved, it was to be -- you are something special. and then most actors make a mistake. which is they then become the thing for which they were initially loved all their lives. they don't evolve. they don't change. i can't be loved for what i was like when i was 19 or 20, and you can't -- you know, you can't. you have to evolve, and strangely enough, i am more loved now than i have ever been in my life and i was wondering why, and i realized it is because i give it more. i didn't use to give it when i was younger, i just took it. >> yes. and acting people, i have said this before, part of the reason people love bruce springsteen, they know he has exhausted

himself in front of them. >> yes. >> he has called -- and you do this, too. >> i try. >> he has called on everything i have, every piece of musicality, every piece of authenticity and every piece of originality and every piece of talent, we are all something, an actor, a journalist, we are a producer, we are a writer, we are a fireman, we are a policeman, we are a doctor, we are all something other than who we are, and which we choose to do. the luckiest among us choose to do something that is at one with who we are. >> yes. and i am lucky that way. >> i am, too. >> but what you just said is wonderful because it starts out wanting love. you get to my age and i like to think i am really evolving very quickly in this decade. you get to my age and you walk out on that stage and what i first said to you is i owe the audience immediacy, i do, because i want them not to love

me the way i used to, i used to, you know i couldn't - >> it is almost like you wanted admiration, validate a handsome -- >> you want to be loved, you want to get laid, you want money. >> nothing wrong with any of those. >> no, not at all. and i am still standing. >> yes, you are. >> and now the immediacy is there because i want them -- i have always wanted this, but now it supersedes my own narcissism and my own need for love. i want them to leave every night somehow changed and affected. i don't want them to sit and say well he speaks well. or he moves well. i want them -- >> or he nailed it.

>> oh, my god, i just hate this actor, i love this actor. i am mad, i am this. i want to stir them so that my energies every night are about that now. as opposed to the preening stage which every actor should go through, every young juvenile leading man has a right to go through. >> because that's part of the narcissism. >> it is part of the preening years, the preening years are part of it. >> and by going through that you have gotten to other places and you couldn't get to that without going through that place. >> you could, a doctor or surgeon, before they get to the >> here is a quote. "it is an interesting problem becoming an older man, there is diminution but knowledge comes along with diminution." which is exactly what we have been talking about, you don't need to speak to that. you don't feel -- where will go after lear? you have done how many movies this year? >> six, two of them are voiceovers. several will disappear. and hopefully one or two will

succeed. >> okay. fair enough but where do you go? does lear take you to another place, a different zone? for self knowledge? because i don't know that lear does, i read all the reviews. you know and i know what they are saying about you. and it is huge, one caveat here or one, you know note here about something, but i don't know how much lear adds to who you were when you walked on that stage as an actor. i don't think you did anything on that stage that anyone who knew you didn't believe you could do. >> except me. >> except you. >> so where i go from here, whether i do lear again or not i am not sure. i don't know -- >> did you say you want to film it? >> i would like to some day do that, but i still would like to continue -- >> you have to get it right on stage right. >> you can't get it on stage, there is no right, there is only the process.

>> right. got you. >> there is no right and most actors drive themselves crazy in the dressing room afterwards. i have sat late at night with somebody who said i couldn't ge it right and i keep saying, here is something i think kind of interesting about an audience. an audience will believe you, totally and completely if you are committedly bad as you are committedly good. they will accept you, don't worry if they are judging you or not, simply go for it so if i do a speech that is bombastic and huge and then the next night i go, i don't have it that way i will do it, as long as i am committed to my choice and they know i am doing it for them they will watch it and make their own opinions. it is not up for me to say whether i am good or bad. it is for me to be totally and completely there for them every time. i know it is -- i know it is a slightly prurient analogy and a guy analogy but it really is

like making love if you continue to make the same moves, your partner is going to turn over and go to sleep and say you did that last night. >> it is a steep price. >> it is not being fresh. >> creative. >> well, it is creative but really is true, it is like i know we are going to do the same thing we did but why can't we do it a little different, you know, why can't -- and it is true and then the experience is much greater, it is. >> you have learned -- >> i have learned boundaries. >> what are boundaries? >> i have learned not to say this, not to do this. as an artist if somebody comes as you with anger, i have learned to deeply and profoundly appreciate the space around each human being and not to invade it and -- >> i have two things. i basically say to myself, try to respect the essential dignity of other human beings and don't

assault their dignity, that is number one. and number 2 don't allow yourself to be petty. because all of us can be, just sort of -- >> that is what -- >> at this point -- >> let you finish? >> it is my table! [laughter] >> i am the interviewee. >> it is my table. you are talking to me! >> we will talk about that some time, charlie, it is your table. >> i would love to interview you. >> oh, no you wouldn't. >> yes, i would. i would just love to keep interrupting you. >> and at one -- so this is what i will finally touch on, this you have written volume one of the memoirs, there will be three volumes. >> two. >> only two. >> there could be three. >> where are you now? have you finished it? >> no. i have got 35 or 36 people, and i go to parties and take the pulses of people.

because you have to be dead to be in my book so, very nicely introduced my first book and he said he was very hurt i wasn't in it until i realized if you had to be dead but we had a number of friends that were, you know, older than that -- >> so, if they died -- >> and i have written about them. >> i see. but you won't publish the book -- >> they are still alive and i wouldn't do that to them. you know. >> reading now, at my bedside table is richard burton's diaries. >> yes, mine too, right next to my book. >> don't you want to ask me, are you about to wrap up? >> no, no. i want to ask you what -- >> what the word is? >> the only thing i can think of is curiosity. >> what is it? i can't wait to see this. this is a great moment for me. >> ready? >> yes. ready. >> focus. i would have said that. >> you didn't. >> i know i didn't, i didn't. >> it is focus because -- those

five letters are everything, without it, there are several huge movie stars at the moment who have been riding success for many years who are not the most gifted actors but the most focused. i mean, this woman i admire so much, beyonce, is brilliantly focused which is why she would have sung it magnificently so what if she went off focus is everything. >> it is indeed. and it also carries out to the notion, i have said this to someone, i want everything that we do to have purpose, so that we focus on it, so that, i mean, and it has to do with the games you play, tennis, how do you go you know, you have got to have purpose and plan and focus. and to do that, if you are going to go there -- >> they have their little box, you know. bill always says the box will go

out into some problem, i put it in a box and send it away, and i focus on what it is. you can't achieve what they have achieved -- >> when are you going to give one of these master classes again? >> when i have time to do it. i love -- i love doing it. >> i would love to come. here is what i think finally and this is why i think this is a wonderful conversation and i thank you for being here. it is this notion that take lear and shakespeare. after i saw it, i went and read a lot of stuff, you know, if i had known all of that i would have understood and appreciated it better. i appreciated it a lot as i watched it and i knew a bit about lear going into it. >> you should be primed for this play, this is true. >> and after i read this stuff and about the freud thing and what george bernard shaw said about it and how people view different characters and some of the video you saw, and it made it -- and this conversation, it made this conversation so much richer, theatre, theatre, if you understand, a, what someone like

shakespeare where it was coming from are and what the historical analogy was and you understand what the actor is doing, it timesthe whole thing 100 more enriching. that the way to live life? situation was filled with that desire to share and be generous. that has not always been my case. in time i did it. -- gift lear had

up.n me is to grow i chose lear. stuff together. i chose a man who was living a lie. a life he thought he deserved and i discovered by reading it, oh, right away, i discovered that you think this, too. you must take off of your crown to play this part. i do not think i was capable. for the first two weeks, i felt like i was killing myself trying to memorize and it was

unbearable but what you said earlier, it sounds so -- at the end of this interview, it sounds so goody twoshoes and psychobabble but the fact is there is anything else as you get older but the fundamental things. there is nothing else. it isn't only love and work it is a good meal. it is your bodily functions being healthy and a lovely bottle of wine sitting around a fire. >> that's what i call the poetry of life. and living your life so fast when you are young you don't have time for it. so aren't we lucky. >> thank you for being here. >> and i forgive you for that tie. >> frank langella, king lear at the brooklyn academy of music. go. thank you for joining us. see you next time.

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>> live from pier 3 in san francisco, welcome to "bloomberg west" where we cover the global technology and media companies that are reshaping our world. our focus is on innovation, technology, and the future of business. we start today with venture capital legend tom perkins who set off controversy after he compared the war on the rich in america to the persecution of