Playing one of modern history's most despised politicians is no easy task. Just ask Frank Langella, whose attempts to channel Richard Nixon in Frost/Nixon meant having to look hard and deep to find something sympathetic in someone almost universally perceived as a slimeball and a crook.
What he finally discovered was Nixon's insecurity.
'I think that he was churning all the time with perceived hate, perceived slights from others,' Langella says.
'He felt that everyone was out to get him. What was fascinating to us back in the 1970s was that he was a walking example of paranoia and suspicion and discomfort. He made everyone else around him uncomfortable, as he was constantly ill at ease. He revealed something that we all keep hidden. That was something I could work with.'
Langella (above right) had a long period to develop Nixon's inner life. He played the disgraced president in the original stage play for 18 months before recreating the role in the film version. He says that the longer he played Nixon, the more he understood him.
'I feel more compassion towards Nixon after playing him for so long,' he admits. 'There's a universality there. All of us shoot ourselves in the foot, get too arrogant about certain things, or get too self-destructive. One of the big things that came out of this process was Nixon's self-destructive side. I got the feeling that he was afraid of success, and that pushed him to a kind of self-destruction.'