From KCRW, Santa Monica and KCRW.com, this is The Treatment.

Welcome to the treatment, which you can also hear at KCRW.com.

You probably know my guest actor Alfred Molini from.

Let's see in the last few years he's done Rango, the Prince of Persia, the Sorcerer's

Apprentice, Law and Order, L.A.

You may know him also as Dr. Otto Octavius from Spider-Man, better known as Dr. Octopus.

He's also dealt with art and commitment to art and several different things.

I play Art, which you got a Tony nomination in 1999. He played Diego Rivera in Frida.

He's now starring in the play Red at the Mark Taper Forum. I'd like to talk to you, Fred, but we're out of time, so.

That's a very lengthy introduction but I appreciate it

we literally only scratched the surface

I know you really from the first time I recognized seeing you

was the letter to the Brezhnev and then a couple years after that

in prick of your ears which is the first time I saw you playing a real person

the story of Joe Orton and his lover

talk to me about playing real figures that you've

done a number of times in your career. Well, I think that there's the only difference between playing

a character that actually existed, either historically or contemporally, and playing a fictitious

character, the only difference is that with the character that existed,

you have a slight obligation not to misrepresent them. So, you know, you can't suddenly say,

if you're playing, for instance, Mark Rothko, who is a well-known Jewish-American painter from the

mid-20th century, you can't suddenly say, I think I'll make him Irish. Or I think I'll play him with a limp.

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