Frank Langella Provides 'Frost/Nixon' Film Details

Multiple Tony Award-winning actor Frank Langella, revealed some additional information on Ron Howard's coming film-adaptation of Peter Morgan's Frost/Nixon in an interview with ComingSoon.com.

Langella says Howard "was actually adamant that the script be preserved almost to the word, and it was, and maybe in addition of maybe ten or twelve minutes of outside stories about Nixon and Frost, but what happens in their private lives…What he did was he mixed in some of Nixon's private life and some of Frost's, so that when the combatants come together, we know more about them."

Langella also reports that Nixon's wife, Patricia, is a character in the movie. Addition scenes to the film include those of Langella getting out of the helicopter and appearances in Yorba Linda and Casa Pacifica.

For the film, Michael Sheen reprises his stage role as reporter Sir David Frost. According to Michael Riedel of the New York Post, filming for Frost/Nixon was completed in LA two weeks ago; and will also feature Kevin Bacon, Rebecca Hall and Oliver Platt.

Frost/Nixon recouped its entire $2.5 million investment before it completed its Broadway run at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre on August 19, 2007.

"How was it that a famous British talk-show host, with a playboy reputation, was the one to elicit the apology that the rest of the world was waiting to hear from a former U.S. President?," ask press notes.  "This fast paced new play, Frost/Nixon, takes audiences into the minds of Richard Nixon and David Frost and shows the determination, conviction and lengths that these two men and their closest confidantes went to as they took the stage in one of the most hard fought political interviews in history."

Frost/Nixon was produced on Broadway by Arielle Tepper Madover, Matthew Byam Shaw, Robert Fox and ACT Productions; David Binder, Debra Black, Annette Niemtzow/Harlene Freezer & The Weinstein Company.

Langella received the 2007 Tony Award and Drama Desk Award for his leading-actor portrayal or Richard Nixon.  Langella won the Best Featured Actor in a Play Tony Awards for his role as Flegont in Fortune's Fool (2002) and as Leslie in Seascape (1975).  His other Broadway credits include Match, Present Laughter, The Father, Sherlock's Last Case, Hurlyburly, Design For Living, Passion, Amadeus, Passione, Dracula, A Cry for Players and Yerma.

Langella stars as an aging writer in the up-coming indie drama "Starting Out in the Evening" by Andrew Wagner; scheduled to open in New York and LA on November 23.

Photo of Frank Langella by Walter McBride / Retna Ltd.