Dinner at Henry's restaurant on Broadway and 105th Street in Manhattan.

FRANK LANGELLA: My phone is on only because my daughter's flying, and when she lands, I look at the text and I know she's okay.

SCOTT RAAB: This is a nice restaurant.

FL: This is my place. [To waitress] Hi, hon. You know what I'd like? A little guava with lemonade.

SR: As far as ordering, I put myself in your hands.

FL: You'd go nuts for the lamb shank.

SR: Then that's what I'll have.

FL: I'll have the roast chicken.

SR: I've talked with a number of people today — construction guys, public-relations men, real estate developers. Each time I mentioned your name, the response was "I love that guy."

FL: Thank you. Means a lot.

SR: I just read your memoir [Dropped Names: Famous Men and Women as I Knew Them]. Did you have help with the book?

FL: The idea of anybody else writing a syllable was anathema to me, the way it would be if someone in the wings said, "I'll take care of this monologue for you."

SR: The chapter that stuck with me the most was George C. Scott, when he dismissed a colleague as being stupid. This is a common presumption — that actors are simply puppets.

FL: It depends upon the actor. Many are perceptive and funny and warm and charming. And many are shits and bitches and idiots. Like every other group of people in the world. If you want to generalize, you could say that actors are angry babies. George might be the angriest, most profoundly tormented human being I've ever known.

SR: You've said that acting is a haven.

FL: Actors want to show off and dance in front of you and get your love, because they don't think they're worthy of it in any other way.

SR: Is that the actor's version of the audience's catharsis?

FL: It really isn't necessary for an actor to have a catharsis. When the lights come up on me, I'm at work. Young actors say, "I didn't feel good tonight." I say, "Really? Who gives a fuck? It's not about what you felt. It's about what they felt. And if they don't feel anything, you haven't done the work."

SR: I recently went to see Death of a Salesman on Broadway. What I saw from Andrew Garfield, who played Biff, was a physical expression of grief, anger, and fury, with tears pouring and his nose running. Maybe it's just craft, but it was one time when I really couldn't tell.

FL: Did you believe him?

SR: I did. I wept.

FL: Then he succeeded. You don't have to figure it out.

SR:Robot & Frank is a very honest movie. Parts of it are very sad, very sobering. Have you watched it?

FL: I haven't seen the polished version that the festival people and the critics are looking at yet. I hope it succeeds.

SR: Your character is by no means some sweetheart.

FL: That's what I like about him.

SR: He's fighting a losing battle, as we all are.

FL: So many people are struggling with living alone. The habit of wanting it your way and only your way becomes very entrenched in men. We're resistant to the idea odrf anybody forcing us to take a look at what our lives have become. I concentrated on that feeling. What would it be like if someone came into my nest and said, "Now, that is going to wake you up in the morning. And that's gonna do the dishes. And that's gonna give you an enema."

SR: The performance is great. You didn't force anything.

FL: It's my job to try to communicate with as little showiness as possible. I was a really showy actor as a young man.

SR: Were you ever a Los Angeles guy?

FL: I did a play in London when my son and my daughter were eight and ten, and the play closed and we had to go back to the United States. I took four pieces of paper, put them on the kitchen table in our rented house, and I said to my wife and kids, "Everybody write down 'New York' or 'L. A.' " And there were three L. A.'s and one New York.

SR: You were the New York.

FL: L. A. is not my place.

SR: Are you saying no to work these days?

FL: I know a couple of actors of my generation who don't even read scripts. Their attitude is "They want me? I'm going." My approach was always to say no more than yes. At this point in my career, I can stand shoulder to shoulder with an actor my age who has chosen to do really awful things, and he will get a job over me. And I can stand shoulder to shoulder with an actor who's been tremendously esoteric, and he can't get anywhere. I fall in some strange category. I've gone my own route. I don't believe in regrets, but I would've said yes a little more than I did. I think I'm working more in this decade than I ever have.

SR: You played Dracula early in your career. Did you drag that around like a stone?

FL: Not in my head, but obviously, yeah. A great deal of your career as an actor you're not in control of. People say, "Why did you choose to do that?" Well, I had two children in private school. Only two or three times in my life have I done something as a career move. I would like to go out both the beneficiary and victim of my own choices. I always choose to do the thing that scares me. Nixon scared the shit out of me. And I chose him over a couple of television series.

SR: Who would reach the end and go, "God, I wish I'd done another shitty series. I could've made a few more dollars"?

FL: How much money do you need? If money is not a god, you're very lucky. You come back to where you started. I'm basically an Italian boy in Bayonne, New Jersey, keeping money under the mattress. I just always thought, I love acting and I love writing. And when I haven't got any more good breath and good energy, then I'll write.

I have a good friend who says, "We're all just dodging bullets." It seems to me the trick to living a good life is to try to move away from the gun you turn on yourself.

SR: Good breath and good energy — I haven't heard it put that way before.

FL: Without them you can't act. You certainly can't act in the theater.

SR: It's also easy to fall back into what's familiar, what feels safe, what you've done before.

FL: I'm becoming less and less controlling. With each decade, I try to shed the notion that something has to be like this.

SR: As a father, I'm still trying to learn to let go.

FL: You have to give children a lot of love but also a lot of discipline. You know what it means to them? They go to bed thinking, He cares enough about me to make a rule.

SR: It's an art. There's no science to it.

FL: It's a daily art. I made horrible mistakes as a father, but I said, "I got your back, I'll spot you through life." Over the years, you don't think they're hearing you. They're sitting on the floor playing with Legos and something's going on above them, and then weeks later or even years later out comes some reaction, and you go, "What? I honestly didn't think you were paying any attention." They hear everything. And we're sitting here today, still victims of what we heard.

What do you want for dessert?

SR: I think it's a bad idea.

FL: It's a terrible idea. Why don't we make it a 50 percent terrible idea as opposed to 100 percent. Meaning we have half of the terrible idea rather than a terrible idea each. Let's split one.

SR: I think that's a less terrible idea.

FL: What appeals to you?

SR: I'd be happy with something less sinful. Sorbet?

FL [To waitress]: Would you bring us three scoops of lemon sorbet and two spoons? [To Raab] This is when I like it here — when it starts to thin out and the bar takes over and there's this whole racket of happiness on the other side of that wall. I like the mise-en-scène here.

SR: Mise-en-scène.

FL: Too pretentious?

SR: Not at all. I just don't get to hear that enough.

FL: Have you fulfilled your quota for the interview?

SR: I have, but I don't think of it as a quota.

FL: There's no substitute for sitting and talking.

SR: Not to worry you, but what time is your daughter scheduled to land?

FL: She landed. I looked over and I saw that happy little text. Her boyfriend picked her up. She's probably home by now and safe in his arms. And I'm happy for that.

SR: You seem like a happy guy.

FL: My torments are for me and for the people who love me and I love. They're not for you to put in a magazine.

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