“What Counts is the Character the Writer Envisioned”

December 4, 2008 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Frost/Nixon 

Michael Sheen – who plays David Frost in Ron Howard’s screen adaptation of Peter Morgan’s play Frost/Nixon – was interviewed by the LA Times on preparing for his role:

“I think it was Oscar Wilde who said: Give a man a mask, and he’ll show you his true face,” Sheen said recently in an interview at a Beverly Hills hotel. “Of all these characters, I’m only playing myself. Because that’s all I’ve got. At some point I recognize myself in them, and that’s the starting point. I build everything from there.”

In prepping to play Frost, Sheen watched footage of the British host’s old show, along with other research. (He chose not to meet the man himself until after the play was up and running in London.) But with portraying any real person, Sheen says, what counts is the character the writer envisioned. “You can fight against it, but ultimately the story is the master, and it’s always going to be Peter Morgan’s Frost,” says Sheen. “You have to sublimate yourself to that and accept it.”

At Townhall, Christy Lemire feels similar about Frank Langella’s characterization of Richard Nixon:

Langella isn’t doing a dead-on impression, which is preferable; Nixon’s quirks have been imitated so frequently and poorly, such an approach risks lapsing into caricature. Rather, he has internalized a volatile combination of inferiority, awkwardness, quick wit and a hunger for power. He loses himself in the role with rumbles and growls, with a hunched carriage and the slightest lift of the eyebrows

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