Frank Langella vs. ‘The World Out There’ : The Stage Is His ‘Liaison’ to Another Kind of Reality

As Frank Langella entered off a side room of a West Hollywood hotel lobby, his appearance loudly suggested: Never trust the image.

Langella’s image has become one of the dark, shatteringly handsome figure, intelligent and seductively charming. Though this covers only a portion of his many roles in theater and (less often) in film and television--Dracula, Zorro, Sherlock Holmes, Cyrano de Bergerac--it is the image frozen in the public mind.

This day, Langella casually sauntered about, breezily apologized for his day-old stubble and appeared to be about the last man in the hotel wanting to seduce anyone.

His main concern was getting away from the noise, away from the fumes coming from the hotel wall painting going on, away from other people.

He slumped into a wooden lanai chair outside near a tree and said: “The older I get, the less I want to be with the world. I’m getting eccentric, I guess. I’m comfortable with it.”

The sun caught Langella’s features, and gave the sense of an old daguerreotype print. At 48, he is as lean as he is tall, but with a gentle face and eyes deep in thought, even slightly troubled. He had a lot on his mind, from the superficiality of today’s media politics to building the character of Valmont in Peter Wood’s production of “Les Liaisons Dangereuses,” Christopher Hampton’s dramatization of Choderlos de Laclos’ 18th-Century novel (opening Thursday at the Ahmanson Theatre).

“I look at this world, and I often don’t know my place in it,” Langella uttered, then wondered if he wasn’t sounding too pretentious. Or perhaps ungrateful, considering the acclaim, the awards (three Obies, a Tony and L.A. Drama Critics’ award for Edward Albee’s “Seascape,” a National Society of Film Critics nod for “Diary of a Mad Housewife”) and a reputation as an actor of quality.

The only method of quality control, he insisted, is staying in the theater.

“But even though I hold onto this very ambivalent regard for The World Out There,” he waved his arm behind him, pointing in the general direction of the jam of billboards and cars on Sunset Boulevard, “theater isn’t an escape for me. It’s a step into another kind of reality. For me, it’s a rush to clarity, because I have been privileged to work in plays that made me learn about myself.”

Langella caught himself short again, as if trying to edit himself before he went off some verbal deep end. “I feel like--and I mean this completely--a working man who does his job and doesn’t opine about ‘The Theatah.’ I hate it when people do that, as if the theater was the most important thing in the world. It’s not. But I do mourn that the theater isn’t treasured more.

“I suppose it’s like any working person who feels for his profession. My job is to make you lose yourself in the story and character. I don’t think that this is noble. It’s simply what the work requires.”

There are a few differences, of course, between this working man and a fellow who fits pipes or drives trucks for a living. For one thing, the pipe fitters or truckers have a steady income. They also likely tell, when asked, how they do what they do for a living.

Ask Langella how he is going about creating Valmont, an amoral master of amorous matters in “Liaisons,” and he’ll respond that “the basic role of good theater is mystery.

“I don’t mean to be sly or coy about your question,” he said, his mouth curling up at the edges into a smile, “but if I describe a character before people have a chance to see him, they’ll look at the character just as I had previously described him.

“I like audiences to find me on the stage in the character. It’s like having a nice secret, and then telling it. Something’s been lost.”

Langella searched for something deeper than this to explain his state of reasoned reclusion, and it had to do with a being a subject of media attention.

“Today,” he said, looking almost stern for a moment, “we’re constantly being shown the strings. Not what the candidates are saying, but how they’re engineering their campaigns and manipulating us. This constant pressure to ‘know’ is paradoxically keeping us more in the dark.

“I mean, are we really better for all the telephones, televisions, VCRs, pagers and all these other communications toys? Do we know each other better? Do we feel for each other more?” Langella fell silent, knowing the questions answered themselves.

Perhaps it was because he was deep into rehearsals and spending “every possible moment trying to get at Valmont,” but “Les Liaisons” and its meaning to him began to creep back into the conversation.

“There’s no summing it up,” he said of the tale, which depicts the ruthless manipulations of Valmont and Madame Merteuil (played by Lynn Redgrave), who pride themselves on finding the emotional weaknesses in others, then exploiting them.

“Valmont isn’t sinister. He’s addicted to Don Juanism, which is running away from one’s emotions. But when he finds the link between his loins and his heart, he is shattered.”

First published in 1782, Laclos’ novel ignited an unprecedented firestorm of scandal, mostly among the idle French rich who recognized themselves in the story. More than 40 years later, “Les Liaisons Dangereuses” still upset the Establishment enough that Paris authorities decreed that every copy of the book be destroyed.

What likely left a severe distaste on Parisian palates--that Valmont and Merteuil are as attractive as they are malevolent--is paradoxically the great attraction for Langella.

“They’re deliciously entertaining people, poisonous but incredibly funny. You can’t literally hate the man you’re playing. Besides, Hampton ensures that you don’t impose 20th-Century views on the material. And even though I’m beginning to see how terrifying their love games are, Valmont is my guy. Some might say that his death is the death of decadence itself. For me, though, he dies of love.”

Langella was now in the midst of the geography of his character, and he was happy to map it out--just a little bit more. “Valmont is the character who profoundly changes,” he offered. “He’s a man supremely sure of who he is and then alters fundamentally. But as he’s doing so, he’s utterly unaware of it. That’s the most fascinating kind of character for me.”

Both “Dracula,” which Langella helped turn into a Broadway hit of unusually big commercial proportions for a non-musical, and “Les Liaisons” (which he never saw in New York) are novels composed of letters. Langella didn’t think it was an accident that he was attracted to both works.

“Letters contain some of the richest writing you’ll find anywhere,” he said, recalling how he and his wife, Ruth, exchanged letters during their courtship. He would often receive three in a day, even when she was halfway around the world on business trips.

“We think now that we can do our long-distance call, and that’ll suffice. But we’re more disconnected from each other than ever. The pressure to get a quick fix--well, I think it’s killing our souls.”

That’s why the first thing Langella looks for in a play is a sophisticated use of language. “That’s the center of the art form. I’ve been really fortunate to play in the works of good writers--David Rabe, who’s woefully underappreciated (“Hurlyburly”), Albee, Peter Shaffer (“Amadeus”)--and doing plays of theirs that have never been spoken before.”

But Langella still despairs over the lack of good writing, and sees it somehow linked with what he calls our “fast-lane, headline culture. I know that I’m probably sounding like an old man, but it’s how I feel. Every generation wrings its hands over the younger generation’s shallowness. Laclos was doing that about his 18th Century.”

Langella’s concerns are fueled by his two children. “I can feign their fascinating questions now (they’re 5 and 7), but not for long. I can only hope they’re not disappointed in the world.”

Besides producing “Sherlock’s Last Case,” in which he also starred, and directing “Passione” and “John and Abigail,” Langella is a budding writer. He’s published a piece about overcoming his own and his son’s nightmare demons and is hoping to fashion a book out of the legendary demons that terrorize actors.

Ironically, he feels that actors must hold onto their internal gremlins rather than let them go. “A fear of joblessness has made me say yes to shallow pursuits in the past,” he said, without naming names. “But now I feel free to say no. And feel lucky to be able to say it.”