tavis: good evening. from los angeles, i am tavis smiley. tonight a conversation with frank langella. he is appearing in less than -- no less than six films this year including draft day. he is also a best-selling writer. his memoir has gone into its fourth renting -- renting. -- printing. we are glad you joined us. a conversation with frank langella coming up right now. ♪

>> and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> lees don't. tavis: i have to. frank langella made his debut in an off-broadway production of the moralist. he has won three tony awards and was nominated for an oscar for his portrayal of nixon. king leart finished in the u.k. and new york, and ,ou can see him in draft day

about football. we will start with a clip from draft day, in which he stars with kevin costner. >> i asked you to make a splash, and you did. >> is everyone still there? >> it's good to be the owner. i am heading for new york. >> you are going to the draft. >> of course i am going to the draft. we got o'callaghan. callahan. >> i guess that's settled. >> we still have to take a look at everything i need to know about him before i can feel good about what we just risked. >> meaning our jobs. what motivated you to do this one? >> money. tavis: i love that you are so candid and honest all the time.

>> a five-year-old chinese girl knows more about football than i do. i know absolutely nothing about football, but i have made two films for ivan. i am very fond of him. together and the film where arnold gets pregnant. "junior." tavis: since you're not a football fan, i can only assume you may have embarrassed yourself a few times but all the cameos made by real football stars in this movie. who did you not know? >> this gentleman walked up to me and had four lines. i said, are you a player? he said, ray kelly. he is a pretty good football player. a very charming man, a very interesting man off-camera. tavis: i thought it was a good movie, because it's one of those

movies i was afraid it was going to be a movie you could only enjoy if you were a football fan, and it's not. storylineso many about so many of life's challenges that we all face. i thought it was very textured. you can enjoy it if you are not a football fan. set. was also a happy sometimes you are not on a happy set. i have been on a happy set. terrificary is a person. kevin is a really generous actor. the first time -- >> i meant what i just said. my mindhe first time to i have ever seen you in a film where i never saw the whites of your eyes. sunglasses on from the first scene to the last. we never see your eyes.

that your decision? >> yes, and i made the decision in the middle of the first day i shot. ivan said,on, and when are you going to take them off. i said in three weeks when i am finished shooting. was goingnow what i to say. he said, we have got to see your eyes. i said, people have been looking at my eyes in movies for 52 years. i thought the glasses give my eyes a distinctive look. you play the owner of the cleveland browns. you went into it not being a football fan. what was your takeaway about the ugly world of football when you finished filming? >> my takeaway was, since i am a very cynical person, the same as my field. so much of it is about money.

even my facetious remark about money is not true. it was really for affection for ivan. an absurd amount of money being paid to people who are talented but so outsized , actors and athletes, that it distorts the excitement of what creativity should be, what a creative football layer should be or a creative artist should be. tavis: did you enjoy playing? >> i did very much. i enjoyed kevin. he is very easy and very smooth, especially in sports films about which he is very smart. tavis: i was thinking if this movie has a big opening, it's

possible a few days from now you will be in three movies in the top 10 at the same time. "ou are in "noah. >> i am in there as an 80 foot monster. tavis: you are in there. the muppet project is out. >> i am a priest. tavis: you go from monster to priest. you do it all. you are in no and this. if this does well you will be in three top movies at the same time. cog in a greate big wheel. i have four more movies coming out in the independent world. tavis: why are you working so hard at this chronologically gifted age? >> i like to do things that are varied and different. i hates an enormous -- the word, but challenge is the

only word you can come up with. if you are asked to play close and then miss piggy, how can you say no? [laughter] admired jenna rollins my whole life. i was asked to do a movie with her. they are interesting roles. i am always doing something in the theater. tavis: everybody loves you in king lear. challenge a word while ago. how big a challenge is it, and why put yourself through it? that's a lot to memorize. you can do a second or a third take. why put yourself through it? >> why not put yourself through it. the question about anything else in life when you get to be 76 is why not put yourself through it.

the danger for some of my colleagues is i have been there, why bother? -- i amng at this age lucky. i am in relatively good shape. if i don't do it now, when am i going to do it? iear" presented something thought was universal. who are you when you take off your crown? we all wear crowns at some time. either a movie star or a famous athlete. i know you love me because of my crown. the whole play is about a man who says i don't want to be king any more, but i want my daughters to tell me they love me and how much they love me and how much they will keep loving me. he discovers it wasn't him they loved but his crown. tavis: there is a great black poet who put it this way. we wear the mask.

this age, are you still learning things about yourself? >> yes. truly that i have never learned so much about my feelings as a man and as a father sometimes and as a friend and as a human as when i played lear, because i had to face what he goes through. if i wanted to play it well, i had to face within myself all while igs i didn't do was wearing my own crown, and what playing him did for me was forced me to look at my own and remove it. someone wrote a great article in the new york times a few months ago about men of my generation have to be kinder. you get kinder when you get into

my age range. you think back to how unkind you were and how cynical you where and how you tossed -- you were and how you tossed things away and you tossed the ball away and you are climbing some -- tossed people away and are climbing some mountain you think you need to reach the top of. tavis: at this stage in courtesy in part of playing king lear, how do you navigate forward? how do you redeem the time, or is that not possible? >> what do you mean? tavis: how do you address at this stage those mistakes, those missteps, those things you wish you had done? or is that not possible? whack certain things happen to you. when i closed king lear i went into a depression for about three weeks. every actor i ever talk to has played a major shakespeare role

has done this. it really rips you to shreds. it just does. if you want to lay the truth of it -- play the truth of it. i don't know if redeemed is the right word. you go through a regret about your own failings and the things you didn't do in your 20's, 30's, 40's, 50's, and 60's. you go through anger at your self. in what way have i let people down in those earlier generations? without sounding like a soft shoe salesman, you do make a say, i think these last couple decades had better be filled with compassion, humanity, kindness, continue the self journey, and try to be more curious about others and look at them, thinking, they are wearing a mask a don't even have on them

and without trying to attack their defense, trattoria differently than you would when you were younger. -- try to live differently than you did when you were younger. advicethat sounds like you were going to offer me because i am just a few years you. >> more than a few. tavis: that's good advice. how do you get where you are now. this to my daughter all the time. you can only lead by example. i made lots of mistakes with my kids when they were little trying to tell them what they should think that 14, 19, 25, 30. you can only lead by example.

can do anything until they are ready to do it. you can sit down with the strong-minded young man of 24 as listen, this,say, this, and this, and all he is doing is saying, when does my father going to shut up so i can grab that girl and get in the back of my car? leave me alone. let me be 24. i think there is a virtue to that. i think the opposite of what i yourying to do now, when are younger is to try to spare kids being kids. they have to go through it. let me warno say, you about this. you want to smoke a little weed, smoke it. i have to make sure you survive. overstateon't want to this, but it sounds to me like

if you take your craft is at best be in seriously, as you do, -- as a thespian seriously, as you do, it almost forces you to grow up. face-to-face with your humanity and others if you are playing the right kind of roles. am i wrong about that? >> you are not wrong, but there is an opposite side which i find his true in most actors. you have two choices. you either unzip, get naked atoretically, and look yourself as a result of the work you are doing, as a result of lear and the part i'm about to play in theater, and you use that,ou are learning from or you do what i have observed many actors do, which is to cling desperately to the thing for which you were initially loved, and you keep on trying to

reproduce it. it's why you see so many facelifts. it's what you see so much botox. toupees and all that stuff. the other side of the coin is a terrible fear of facing it. believe me, it's frightening. when i identified with what i thought lear's problem was and saw it in myself, it was devastating. he has two choices, just like i do. his choice was, i grabbed my crown back, start a war, get my kingdom back, or face myself, and by the time he does, he leaves the one -- loses the one creature that means the most to him. his daughter dies in his arms. seen so well adjusted to the notion of aging. >> there is no choice. tavis: there is a choice. everybody's not as well

adjusted. some people go through hell. do.here are periods when i it's still amazing to me. what your inner feeling is about yourself and what you catch in the glass as you walk i madison avenue and see your grandfather looking at you through the glass of a store, and i go, what my grandfather -- it's me. i'm 28 and have a full head of hair, and i'm very thin. in my mind i'm very different. then i see what my physical life is. there are times when there's nothing -- when you want to be less than old, but it's so well balanced by what you've learned about yourself and what you've learned about the world and how few things rile you up anymore. tavis: what's the best thing for

you about hitting older? >> probably what we're talking about. theably the shedding of crueler side of my nature, the shedding of the more competitive side of my nature, the acceptance of it. there is a thing called the -- with -- the death wish. it doesn't mean you want to die. it just means as we get into some inner part of you does begin to accept the fact you are heading to the and. there is a piece that comes with it. i would think the best thing for me about being older on the days when i am happy about it are all .hose things let it go. don't get uptight about these things. they are so unimportant. selfish reason a

for my asking all these questions. i always learn from you when you come on this program. i'm starting to get more frantic about the time. to me there are only so many years when we can push out our most progressive work. you don't move at the same speed. your body changes. you can't avoid that. when you are turning 50 that window is going to close at some .oint >> the window will never close. there is nothing like the bravery an extraordinary outcome

of a child in a cancer hospital fighting to live. the year has nothing to do with it. i just delivered a eulogy for almost i oldest friend. i have known her for 50 years. was 103. tavis: a great philanthropist. >> my last conversation with her was when he four hours before she died. -- was 24 hours before she died. i knew there were dozens of things wrong with her. she said, call me soon. thinking -- the thing i think will keep you young is curiosity. you to myat can take age and further. the moment you lose that and

start to slow down, it's a waste of time. that's exactly how i felt at 50. i honestly think i am so different now at 76 than i was at 66. i was immensely different. when i was your age i had two small children. my last kids were born when i was in my 40's. i still have little kids around me, which gave me the illusion of feeling younger. 50 is incredibly young. ivis: if it's about curiosity have got tons of that. >> it's why you are a good interviewer. heard youhought i whisper you are going back on stage. what this next work, or can you not talk about it? wi-fi option to play written in 1960 -- >> i option a play written in 1960. i love the title already.

>> it started great actress of her time, and i'm going to play her role. tavis: you go on to play a woman? >> we ran it in new york quite successfully. tavis: what do you mean when you say you always wanted to? >> i have always wanted to play a female. tavis: why? >> i can't explain it. particularly this female in this play. it's my job. i'm an actor, so why shouldn't i investigate how i would present myself as a female, how i would move if i had breast in that particular shape of hips and , and this particular woman is a powerful, strong monster. it's not camp at all. i want to inhabit that sensibility. pull: you think you can

this off, having never done it before? >> of course. tavis: i only ask before because you talked about the challenges of lear. it seems it might rival lear. did a play, and i said to the producers to see if they wanted to put money in it -- i don't want your imaginations to be to challenge, so i put on a perl necklace and redings and painted my lips , and even that alone gave me and feeling of excitement adventure. where can i take this woman as opposed to can i take this woman? tavis: i will be in new york to see that. >> if i get the money. i put this picture on the

table. i want you to see -- i don't know if you can zoom in, but it's a picture of frank langella reading his book, which is in its fourth printing. on the table is a copy of one of .y books another picture of the two of us on the set. all these things concerning me are down here, and his book is in focus. it says, as you can see, i like to keep the important thing is in focus. gift.you for that i appreciate it. i want to let you know i did receive it. making theve picture. my daughter is a great photographer. weinbergerng justice

when i took that picture in new york, a movie about the supreme court. tavis: thank you for keeping the right things in focus. i am glad you came on. such a delight to see you. that's our show for tonight. things for watching. as always, keep the faith. >> for more information on today's show, visit tavis smiley at pbs.org. tavis: hi, i'm tavis smiley. join me next time for a conversation with catherine newman about her new tome. that's next time. we will see you then. ♪

>> and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. ♪ daniel mansergh: >> be more.

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