>> rose: welcome to the program, this evening a conversation with frank langella. >> i think he find the wisdom i am still. >> rose: looking for. >> looking for myself but what i think it is is, really, truly, you mean, all i have to do is be myself? all i have to do is love and be loved? 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, m my tony, all i have to do is wake up in the morning, stand there naked before you and you will love me? really? >> most of us don't want to believe that. >> rose: frank langella for the hour. next. >> funding for charlie rose was

provided by the following. >> additiona l funding provided by these funders. and by bloomberg, a provider of m ultimedia news and information services worldwide. >> captioning sponsored by rose communications 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 -- i guess it all boils down to --

>> rose: frank langella is here, he once said i like monsters, i like mystery men, langella made a habit of playing both n 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. >> the good to be here. >> rose: 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 in 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 metaphor cal 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 of per so that 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 skipping 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 the part. >> okay. locks of questions coming out of that, first of all let's talk a bit about king lear, glin six tee zero -- 1603 or 1604, almost two versions of fit, 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. >> rose: he loves. >> he loves the youngest. >> rose: and she doesn't tell him false things. >> she doesn't say you are the best dad in the world, i love you because you are my father and he says what? what do you mean you love me because? come on, 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. >> rose: 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 ask 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 just happened? and 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 thrown flown, he says oh i have taken too little care of this, poor naked wrechs wretches why haven't i noticed you before, why haven't i ever noticed you, 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. >> rose: no television camera. >> no television cameras, we are

just two guys, you know, with various degrees of -- >> rose: 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. >> rose: matinee island occasionally. you had all of the privileges of stardom, and then it was over. >> yes. >> a 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 seventies. >> that is a great question. >> look, there are seasons in our lives when you are in your twenties and 30s and 40s and your fifties, you identify yourself through a lot of things you no longer can identify

yourself through i in your seventies 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 accepted? where am i not accepted? but 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 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 decided not to make cheap choices too. >> yes. >> rose: you decided to stick to those kind of things which have an integrity in them. >> i very -- >> rose: 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. >> >> rose: where are you now? >> far more at ease, far more, i would think, contemplative and

far more a friend of mine once said you are december, in desperate need of humbling and i think at that time he was right. >> yes. >> rose: and today you are december, 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 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 -- >> rose: and so if ian bremmer go back on february 9th i may see a very different rear? >> yes. i don't play it -- i said this in an interview, i don't play this pa bart the same every night and you request look at that in two-way. you say oh that is unprofessional or you say what i really believe which is what you owe an audience when you walk pout 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 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. >> rose: 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 a bus somewhere so i had someone who didn't know how to do the changes, so i had to go into the wings and do them myself and team 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 direction of 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. >> rose: 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 cliches 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 think i can't because shakespeare has things happen to him off camera, off stage that are impossible to link psychologically. >> rose: i think with ac 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 ever written and uncon connectible. >> rose: you a, unconquerable. >> you looked at a whole series

of actors who played lear and you difficult that 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 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 hung bring for information on anything i do. >> >> rose: me too. >> nixon i read and read and watched and watched and with lear i did that too. >> rose: i think information freeze 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. >> rose: 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. >> rose: 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? how am i going to do it? 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 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 plea at that moment, you know what i mean? >> rose: 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 leave 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? >> rose: 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. >> rose: it is a scene -- >> shock i look? >> rose: of course you should. >> i have all the hubris in the world. >> rose: 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. >> >> the poorest thing. >> man's life is -- you want me to go to war. scarcely keeps me warm. >> oh, heavens. >> patience, i need, you see me here, a poor old man, full of grief, wretched. >> if it be you that put my daughter's hearts against me, it is too much to bear it, take me!

>> >> my man's cheeks, now. >> unnatural! >> come! 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 vile! but it just goes to show you how many ways you can do that speech and it is very interesting that 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. >> rose: 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. >> rose: yes. 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. >> rose: 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 will like something is coming back into you. >> yes, people have told me i get younger in the play. >> and that is purposeful. >> rose: 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, 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 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 dill 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 it ting. 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 cash 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. >> rose: queue know who was fascinated by that was saying mood 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 s so terrified but the first day i did it. >> rose: stop. i came the first day of rehearsal fully memorized because i was so terrified. >> yes. >> rose: 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. >> rose: exactly. >> some men do. >> rose: right, right, right. romantics. >> it changes. >> rose: but it is that idea, you know, that i think that the idea of the pursuit of excellence in anything is a life arming act and it is not false, in fact, it is pure. >> yes. >> and that keeps you, i mean, certain things don't -- are inevitable, which is all the sort of decline and begins earlier than we think you talk to do, doctors and they will explain that to you, but at the same time to many people, and it is sad, they have lost that sense of the childlike wonder about life, and knew discovery. >> or they have lost curiosity. >> rose: and they have lost

curiosity. yes. you see, i haven't, i have entered into this conversation but you are talking about hubris and all of those kind of things, one sense you may go and somebody may not recognize you and like nicholas told me one time he said there will in, there will come a time in which you walk down the street and you will find people who used to turn and look at you won't turn and look at you. are you going to worry about that? >> but, you know, it brings me to something that i am pass fascinated to talk about which is how complicated we are and how complicated your life should be. again, i say to these young people, i do classes with, don't lie around in your room all day waiting to come in and do your scene. >> rose: right. >> if you are in in a play, dot hang out at the house all day waiting on the an, to be an actor, complicate your life, have a lover, fight with your parents, do your laundry so when you get there and you are a minute before you walk on, like

-- it is very hard for me t to explain but it is what i do, i just take a big deep breath and i take everything that has happened, all the complicated thoughts flying around in my head and i go from the time it is time to walk on and bring all of that inside cooking with me for lear, because the more complicated i am as a person and the more challenged, i hate the word but the only one i can think of at the most the more my day is pulled with pushes and pulls the better actor i will be. >> rose: what does the fool mean no the king in this play? >> well he is his conscience. >> rose: 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 -- >> rose: defense -- >> defense for living, the

reason they are doing what they are doing. >> rose: oh, the reason they are where they are. >> when i was younger,. >> when i 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 right? and right had nothing to do with it, i would try to make somebody see something and you can't. >> rose: 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 the definition of wisdom? 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, a little unde under par bt 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. >> rose: explain that to me, then. >> well, this particular -- >> >> rose: what was that freudian slip? >> i don't know. 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 corpse and 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 understands what? 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 is really, truly, you mean all i have to do is be myself? all i have to do is love and be loved? 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? really? most of us don't want to believe that. >> rose: do you believe it yet? >> now i do. >> rose: 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. >> rose: 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

something, i mean something. the happenstance is, i happen to win something. but i need something. >> rose: absolutely. >> and those who love me. >> rose: understand that. >> love me and my own daughter loves me for that, from the moment she was born. >> ridiculous 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. is 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. >> rose: 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. >> rose: 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 it is one

of the greatest performances that ever lived and i think she should have risked it at the inauguration, because that is what great artists do too. >> rose: i think so too. >> risk it. >> rose: that is a small example to me. >> yes, but the fact is, i have such admiration for her. 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. >> rose: right. >> and some nights you are tran cendent and some nights -- but if you don't risk you will never get there. >> rose: i think risk and failure are central to a genuinely real life, risk and

failure. >> yes. >> rose: because there is no perfect life and no perfect man and no perfect experience, andable so, therefore, that means that, you know, and sometimes your risks should achieve your grasp. >> say that to a 13-year-old boy who can't walk across the gym who can't ask the girl to are 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. >> rose: so in preparation for this, just because it is such a mag any extent role and magnificent performance, and you, obviously, failed it, how did you prepare? is it mental or is it physical? >> i didn't nail it. >> rose: you didn't? you haven't gotten it? >> not by my standards i haven't failed it. >> rose: 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 really think i ever nail anything because i never really think -- >> rose: 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. >> rose: fair enough. do you think you will? >> no. not -- >> >> rose: in a couple of weeks here, get with it. go home and practice, practice, practice. >> i know the date i will think i failed 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. >> rose: so maybe that is a very good thing. so what do you tell actors in knees master classes you occasionally teach? >> well, i tell them the three things -- >> rose: 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 four hour 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. >> rose: 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. >> rose: 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. >> rose: i think something interesting here about the idea that, and maybe, maybe lear shouldn't have pound 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 artist, 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, quote, failed it. >> yes. i have had -- >> rose:. >> but again, they are extraordinary. there is -- yes. there is a look, alan lad was a very well-known actor when he was young he went into a bar after a day's shooting and all the -- i said, so mr. actor, what did 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. >> rose: movie star, more important. >> more interesting. did you ever say that to yourself? 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 the 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. >> rose: 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. >> rose: 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. >> rose: 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 -- >> rose: it is almost like you wanted admiration, validate a handsome. >> you want to be loved, you want to get laid, you want money. >> rose: nothing wrong with any of those. >> no, not at all. and i am still standing. >> rose: yes, you are. >> and now the immediacy is there because i want them -- i have always wanted this, but now iit supersedes my own nas similr 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 -- >> rose: or he failed it. >> oh, my god what did i just

see and feel? i 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. >> rose: 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 knife. >> rose: here is a quote. it is an interesting problem ba 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 you 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. >> rose: okay. fair enough but where do you go after lear? does lear take you to another place, a different zone? for self knowledge? because i don't know that lear dash 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. >> rose: except you. >> so where i go from here, whether i do lear again or not i am not sure.

i don't know -- >> rose: did you say you want to film it? >> i would like to some day do that, but i still would like to continue -- >> rose: 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. >> rose: right. got you. >> there is no right and most actors drive themselves crazy in the dressing room afterwards, i have set late at night with somebody who said write get 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 september 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 he 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 t to to turn or and go to sleep and say you did that last night. >> rose: it is a steep price. >> it is not being fresh. >> rose: 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. >> rose: you have learned -- >> i have learned boundaries. >> rose: 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 -- >> >> rose: i have two things. i basically say to myself, try to respect the essential dignity of other human beings and don't assault their difficult 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 -- >> rose: at this point -- >> let you finish? >> rose: it is my table! >> i am the interviewee. >> rose: 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. >> rose: oh, no you wouldn't. >> yes, i would. i would just love to keep interrupting you. >> rose: and at one -- so this is what i will finally touch on, this you have written volume one of the memoir, there will be three volumes. >> two.

>> rose: only two. >> there could be three. >> rose: 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 read 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 -- >> rose: so -- >> and i have written about them. >> rose: i see. but you won't publish the book -- >> they are still alive and i wouldn't do that to them. you know. >> rose: you are reading now, at my bedside table is richard burton's diaries. >> yes, mine too, right next to my book. [laughter.] >> don't you want to ask me, are you about to wrap up? >> rose: no, no. i want to ask you what -- >> what the word is? >> rose: the only thing i can think of is curiosity. >> what is it.

>> rose: i can't wait to see this. this is a great moment for me. >> ready? >> rose: yes. ready. >> rose: focus. i would have said that. >> you didn't. >> rose: 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 writing, 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 mag any extently live so why she went off focus is everything. >> rose: 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

from here to here? 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. >> rose:. >> >> 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 -- >> rose: 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. >> rose: 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. >> rose: 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 makes the whole thing 100 times exponentially more enriching. >> and isn't that the way to live life? >> rose: yes. >> isn't it -- it is not possible, but wouldn't it be wonderful if every dinner you have with a friend, every love affair, every work situation were filled with that kind of desire to communicate, desire to share and desire to be humanly generous, which is not always been my case, which is why i am on this particular -- and i don't mean this from any

pedestal at all. i mean it from, it is about, it is about time i did it and the greatest gift lear has given me is to help me grow up in a way, would i have done it without him? neighbor but i think the fact of what has come true to me now at 76 is when i look back at all the parts i have chosen, many of them were chosen for a place i was in at that moment in my life. so it is no accident that -- two years ago when i was beginning this kind of epiphany about gee i better get my stuff together here, that i chose lear, because rather than pay another, villain, i chose a man who in fact was living a lie, living a life he thought he deserved, and i discovered by reading it, oh,

right away, i discovered, you think that too about yourself. you must take off your crown in order to play this part, you better take off your crown and i didn't think i was capable, i thought i in the first two weeks i thought i would kill myself trying to memorize it was unbearable but what you said earlier, it is a sense of so -- at the end of this interview, it sounds so good at this two shoes and so sort of .. psycho babble, be 2 fact is that there isn't 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 boldly functions being heldly, it is a lovely bottle of wine sitting around a fire. >> rose: that's what i call the portrait of life. and living your life so fast when you are young you don't have time for it. so aren't we lucky. >> rose: thank you for being here. >> and i for give you that tie.

>> rose: my friend franc, king lear at the brooklyn academy of music. go. thank you for joining us. see you next time. captioning sponsored by rose communications captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org

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