The most recent issue of Newsweek featured its annual Oscar Roundtable, moderated by the magazine’s David Ansen and Ramin Setoodeh. The participants this year included Anne Hathaway, Sally Hawkins, Robert Downey Jr., Brad Pitt, Mickey Rourke, and Frank Langella, the latter three competing for the Best Actor Academy Award this year. Langella, unfortunately, did not provide added detail to his earlier account of his conversations with the 37th President that helped him fill out his phenomenal portrayal in Frost/Nixon. But he did provide this description of how he worked on the set:
I like to sit around and eat doughnuts, and Kevin Bacon and I like to tell dirty stories. But the minute I opened the door, I told Ron Howard I should stay in character. Because the tension around me will be greater, and if I break character at all and start shooting the s–––, I won’t feel that intimidation people feel around a president. So I did for 32 days. It was very lonely and very right for the character. I just stayed the president.
The man who long ago laid claim to being the world’s sexiest Dracula also reveals that he broke into showbiz in the role of… an elf. True, he was seven at the time, and in a school Christmas play in beautiful downtown Bayonne, New Jersey, but it’s still just a little bit startling.