she evaded various things and i don't think the story will go away. >> rose: speaking of politics, we continue with kevin spacey who play president of france's underwood in the hit reis "house of cards." >> my job is to serve the writing. we'll do a table read about two weeks before we shoot the particular episode and in the two weeks before we start, dollar lot of questions that came out of the table read, a lot of rewrites will happen then you live with something for a while and you learn it. i like to learn things just enough that i still have to reach for it when the camera is rolling. the magic as jack lemmon used to say -- magic time. >> rose: what would he say? every time before a take, rolling camera -- and then jack lemmon under his breath would say, magic time. that's what you want to happen, magic when the camera is rolling. >> rose: mark halperin, john heilemann and kevin spacey when we continue. funding for charlie rose is provided by the following. >> rose: additional funding provided by: >> and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and information services worldwide. captioning sponsored by rose communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. >> rose: we begin this evening with hillary clinton's press conference. the former secretary of state addressed a controversy over her use of a personal email account while in office instead of the government email system. >> when i got to work as sgt. of state, i -- as secretary of state, i opted for convenience to use my personal email account which was allowed by the state department because i thought it would be easier to carry just one device for my work and for my personal e-mails instead of two. looking back, it would have been better if i had simply used a second email account and carried a second phone, but, at the time, this didn't seem like an issue. we went through a thorough process to identify all of my work-related e-mails and deliver them to the state department. at the end, i chose not to keep my private, personal e-mails. e-mails about planning chelsea's wedding or my mother's funeral arrangements, condolence notes to friends, as well as yoga routines, family vacations the other things you typically find in inboxes. no one wants their personal e-mails made public and i think most people understand that and respect that privacy. >> rose: the controversy over whether she purposely used her private email to evade request of federal records is expected to continue. secretary clinton is widely seen as the likely presidential nominee of the democratic party in 2016. today marks the first time she answered political questions since h her 2008 presidential campaign. joining me now are mark halperin and john heilemann of bloomberg politics. they're host of the show "with all due respect." i am pleased to have them here. welcome. >> thank you, charlie. >> rose: welcome back. always happy to be at this table. >> rose: happy to have you here. john, tell me what's your assessment of the press conference? >> well, i think there was -- ton positive side, she was better than she was in her book tour in a lot of ways, in a much more hostile environment. she face add large scrum of reporters, many foreign journalists who don't normally cover politics took a fair amount of questions, talked about this being a brief press conference but she answered about ten questions, went on for about 20 minutes or so. she was at times quite poised, but i think she did not answer many of the central questions to a lot of people's satisfaction. there were questions she chose not to answer that were asked she evaded various things and i don't think the story was going to go away. >> there are two things i think are central. there are many issues but two central. one is i think if you're inclined to believe her it's perfectly reasonable the reason she said she set up a personal account and didn't use the government email, it was easier and she said today perhaps she should have done it another way in retrospect but it seems at minimum she might have been cavalier about document requests because afterwards she put out a document about saying she was meticulous. >> rose: plans she was? perhaps she was. she said if she email that wasn't on the government system in some cases she would forward them to someone in the government so they would be captured on forward request or a subpoena. not clear who she did it 100% of the time. on the front end, she didn't answer the question did she consult the state department about the security of her server, she wouldn't address that. on the back end she said she would not let independent authority or figure look at the server and see did she adequately take off e-mails and send them to the government. i think that that question -- >> rose: she will not do that? she will not. she said in the video my private e-mails should be private. no one's advocating private e-mails should be made public. some are advocating an independent person should look at the email and decide. what she said was strange to my ears and john's is that she deleted many many personal e-mails from this account and perhaps they're gone forever. it's strange someone will delete e-mails about her daughter's wedding. >> the biggest problem right is that we now, according to their accounting she sent about 30,000 or so e-mails that she regards -- she, as the only arbiter of this not by anyone else's arbitration, did she regard it as work related and gave them to the state department. 31,000 e-mails she deemed to be personal e-mails. no one has seen them and she's say fog one ever will see the e-mails and that she also suggests she deleted many if not all of them. so one of the headlines that will come out for people certainly on the right and some in the center and some on the good government side of the left will be hillary clinton destroyed tens of thousands of e-mails and all she is saying to us is "trust me that they are all innocuous." that is basically her posture. >> rose: somebody would go to anybody who might be a presidential candidate and say we think we owing to see all your e-mails. >> none of them beside them were secretary of state. >> rose: the point is she's seeing what you can't see is the personal stuff. if she'd had a separate account and had divided it up, you would still see the government stuff in the email that went to the government and the personal stuff and she could still say you don't have any right to see that, correct. >> i believe under the law that's the case. the circumstances that have arisen is she got into office and as mark said she made an argument about convenience. that still strikes some people as not a plausible argument given that many people in politics carry two devices, why couldn't she get a personal and a state department email on one device, a lot of questions are raised about that. but to go and set up a separate server at home and have a bunch of e-mails spsz she will not allow to be audit she claims there were no security breaches, no hacks and all was secure, but that can't be proven because she won't let anybody look at the server or let anyone look alt the e-mails. for those who want to be doubters, there is a lot of reason to have doubt. she did not resolve all the skepticism for people who have doubts. >> rose: will this go away and you will be back to the questions of her political ambition and career and what she offers in the 2016 version of her desire to be president? >> i think republicans will continue to hammer on it. the head of the committee said today he would have her testify not just about benghazi but her email practices. i think her performance today is enough to have democrats come back into her corner and i think if there are no new rev layings there is not some big thing. before today i did think it was a big thing. i think based on her performance and answers this will largely go away if there are no more new revelations ivment she will almost certainly be the democratickic nominee. there have been questions about the donors to the family foundation. >> rose: where is that. mitchell asked her questions about that today and she answered in a complete unsatisfactory way. she asked about how she could answer that. she basically said i'm proud of what our foundation did and let's move on to the next question. was totally non-responsive to my ear. there are a lot of stories out there. i think again she will almost certainly be the democratic nominee unless something else happens, but there's a poll out today in the new wreath jownl nbc poll which suggests now the country people are more attracted to a notion of a candidate of change than they were in 2008 when the whole race was about who was going to be the candidate of change. it is more intense right now than it was in 2008. that is what the poll suggests. all i'm saying is i agree that none of the specific things, but to the extent that the point you made, charlie and the point mark made is it reminds people of the things they don't like about the clintons. many people remember the '90s as prosperity and bill clinton as a loveable rogue but they're not 100% sold. the swing voters, right. this kind of thing reminds people of the old clintons and that is not what change looks like to people in the middle of the electorate. >> rose: someone said today i've had all the drama i need. >> more coming. >> reporter: from where? a thousand different directions. we'll go back to parts of whitewater. >> the billing records. , the cattle futures the rose law firm. it's all going to come back. the the upside of her not having an opponent is she can raise and spend all the money worrying about a general elections and doesn't have to worry about being beaten if she doesn't have a serious opponent. eth all on her. they will be able to trot this stuff out many newspapers and television networks and magazines, they have investigative reporting budgets 16 republicans to look at one democrat and there will be a lot more investigatings. >> you can think of all the "scandals," cattle futures, all that '90s agita and you can say, bill clinton survived it in the '90s, he was a very popular post-senator and president. another part, you can say back in 2008, there was a large part of the democratic party on the other side of the country that sighed at the notion of going back to the stuff from the '90s, all the clinton wars, right? will this not a psyching overhang for her that people were reminded that man, there was impeachment and all of that. if this stretches out and republicans with benghazi and more subpoenas and this and that, what is the psychic toll this takes on the electorate in terms of her prospects? it's not good. >> another thing about today, her first political press conference since 2008, i thought strong performances under those circumstances, but if it is true we normally elect the most likable person, today she was practiced careful evaded somewhat deftly burks that's not her at her most likable. i think she was good enough today to be elected if the republicans nominate someone not particularly likable. but she was not her likable self. >> rose: who is the most likable candidate in both parties who might be considering already they're given signals that they're running? who's the most likability? >> to some extent, it's a matter of taste. i don't think there's anybody like bush 43 or bill clinton in their periods or barack obama who i think were clearly very likable figures. i think there's lots of likable republicans but i don't think there's any cheerleader in that respect. >> rose: in an interview today with dan pfeiffer about leaving the white house he said it will be interesting to see if she can put together the coalition that won for obama in 2008 and 2012 which he did not have in 2014 or 2010. >> in a presidential year, young millennials non-white voters and single s ñ she has a chance if she's a democratic nominee to do better than president obama with working class voters and males. >> she was stronger than barack obama. >> if you think she can do gays, lesbians, union households african-americans, better with hispanics men married couples -- >> rose: she could be president, if that's all true. >> potentially, and depending on how much buoyancy and who the republicans nominate, she may not have the turnout problem some may have on the coalition descendents. >> she comes into any democrat nominee and especially one who will, whatever all these controversies and flaps unfold into, she comes in with an extraordinarily enthusiastic base of women in the democratic party who will see her as the historic candidate, rally behind her under any circumstances and if you combine that with the inherent demographic advantages and the electoral advantages any presidential nominee has now, it's hard not to argue she at least has a 50/50 shot if not a slight favorite in the race. but the thing that's the drag on her, i will say again, you know, i think the sense that she is the past and the sense that people are weary and don't necessarily want to go back to the things they remember that were bad about the clinton years is going to be a persistent problem in the same way the similar kinds of atmospheric stuff will be the biggest challenge for jeb bush in a different way. >> rose: how's he doing? eally well now with elites and donors. >> rose: but they're outnumbered. >> but as mark will tell you and we both will tell you, at this point in the race, in the invisible primary, doing well with elites elected officials with attorneys all that stuff he's doing incredibly well with. he has real problems with elements of the republican base but doing well at the things he's trying to do well at. >> i saw him in iowa last week and he was seen in las vegas, people underrate his people skills. >> rose: back in a moment, kevin spacey is here, think francis underwood. >> rose: kevin spacey is here, an oscar-winning actor and leading face of "house of cards," netflix groundbreaking political drama stars as francis underwood, a southern congressman who murdered his way into the mightest office in government. president obama has said he is a guy who is getting a lot of stuff done. all 13 episodes of "house of cards" third season were released on netflix last month. here is a look. >> you want to know what takes real courage? holding the ball together when the stakes are this high. ♪ >> rose: am pleased to have kevin spacey back at this table. welcome, sir. >> thank you for having me. >> rose: how is everything? very well. i'm on stage as we speak doing my last production as an actor as i'm still artistic director. >> rose: you're giving that up too aren't you? >> giving that up, essentially august is when matthew who did matilda on broadway and direct me and jeff in the plow as well as great productions of the norman conquest, he's taking over my role. >> rose: we'll come back to that. but now frank underwood, he's in power. about governance in part. >> it's very interesting. some people said well, now that he's president, he did what he set out to do. you say, wait a minute, getting to the presidency even though he did it in elusive ways for innersubstance by not running for office, that's one particular challenge getting to the white house, i actually think that's one thing. but then actually governing what you want to accomplish as president has been a whole other -- it's just getting started. one of the things i think we've had an interesting time exploring this third season is you take two characters like francis sinclair who have successfully managed to do very well in the shadows and dark alice, what happens to them is when they're suddenly in the hot, white spotlight of the presidency, there are no more shadows. so it's very interesting to see what's going to happen, a, to what they try to achieve and, b, as a couple. >> rose: and the power. yeah. >> rose: tell me how you see him. a patriot? >> i think he's -- >> rose: servant of the country? >> i think he believes that his job in politics is to get things done and that -- >> rose: the ends justifies the means? >> yes. if you set aside the murdering just for a moment -- >> rose: just for a moment. (laughter) >> just for a second, you know look one of the things i loved about the lincoln film was that they were willing to show lincoln as a politician. he was willing to do what he had to do to get the votes to end slavery in this country because he felt that was more important than giving someone a role or assignment or an office. >> rose: even if it made locking up politicians. >> but today that would be a scandal. >> rose: if you ask bo and others and maybe you they say frank was two-thirds lyndon johnson. he got things done. you can talk about the emancipation proclamation and the voting rights bill like in selma. >> yes. johnson for his entire congressional career was on the opposite side of the civil rights movement no doubt about it. but when he became president a i think because of the way he became president feeling it was his obligation to try to continue president kennedy's mandate, he saw the presidency as a place where you can, in fact, get something like that done and that's what he sought out to do. now, obviously -- >> rose: on civil rights he did more than kennedy had done after he became president and in fact he said -- and perhaps if kennedy had had a longer time in the second term, he might have done that, but he also said, lyndon johnson did if you can't do this what's the presidency for? >> exactly, what's it for. and obviously the march in selma had a lot to do with pushing that agenda further for johnson. >> rose: back to frank underwood, mafia chieftains they know who they are and what they're about -- making money, keeping the family together. >> i'll make you an offer you couldn't refuse (spoken in voice of the godfather) (laughter) >> rose: what would bill clinton say about that? >> i love that "house of cards," though it's so good -- >> rose: and johnny carson would say about the "house of cards"? >> well, i'd binge but i'm too busy writing monologues. can't binge. we'll be right back. he was so good at that. >> rose: but this year, it opens urinating on his father's grave saying that, when you become president, you have to be a little human. >> yeah, because for the press, they think he's there honoring his father but in private he's got other feelings. yeah, i think it's an interesting comment that there are certain things, you know. you've covered politics for a long time. we watch when politicians who are not particularly good at putting across their own humanity, that they sort of have to do things they've got to go to a rally and bakeoffs and wear silly hats, all of that -- >> rose: louie one of the hollywood chieftains said, what you need to do is be sincere and once you get that down, you can do anything. >> yeah, once you get sincerity down, you can accomplish anything, yeah. >> rose: but here's criticism basically saying this governance is not as interesting and compelling and exciting as all the things that frank did to get here -- how he used people, manipulated people. i mean, macabellian was an amateur next to frank underwood. >> you can either continue to repeat yourself and think, oh, we'll just do -- i've heard criticisms there isn't enough talking into the camera this season as previous seasons but we are interested in exploring a lot of different things and going into a lot of different territory and i think when you take the season as a whole i think we've gone to a lot of new and interesting places, and i was thrilled to do it and delighted it's out there. but i also fully, we kind of have to expect that the more show goes on and more attention it gets, the better it gets. >> rose: when you were take your character to another level what were you thinking about? >> i have a remarkable team of writers. we begin discussions about the arc of the season, the kind of issues we want to grapple with where the story line might go very, very early on. so as i'm getting scripts or drafts of scenes, there isn't a whole lot that sort of knocks me off my chair and i go, wow, i didn't know that was coming. so i'm pretty well informed in terms of structurally where we're headed. for me, what's exciting about doing this show and playing this character is all i don't know about him. i'm still learning about him. we're groping and have incredible collaboration between robin and me and bo. i love it. >> rose: talk about that for a moment you felt know where the script is taking you but this is where acting adds to the script. >> essentially, we're not the creators, we're the interpreters. my job is to serve the writing. we'll do a table read usually about two weeks before we start shooting that particular episode and in that two weeks before we start there's a lot of questions that came out of the table read, a lot of rewrites happen then you live with something for a while and you learn it, but i like to learn things just enough that i still have to reach for it when the camera's rolling that the magic as jack lemmon used to say magic time. >> rose: what would jack lemmon say? >> every time before a take, rolling, camera slate, and then jack under his breath would say magic time. that's what you want to happen, the magic to happen when the camera is rolling. i don't overrehearse but there's a tremendous amount of discussion in the morning before we do the scenes about how do we attack it, how do we stage it, is this the right dialogue and does that actually work and there's a wonderful sense of challenging each other and pushing each other to what we think is the best place to be in that particular scene. >> rose: how wrong would i be if i said the first two seasons were about frank underwood and how he achieved power? and this season we'll have more a focus on the relationship between the two of them. >> i would say that's fair. i would always say from the beginning it was a story about this particular relationship and that what the first two seasons did was set up this season. if the first two seasons had been as focused on the two of them, i don't think he would have gotten as much of the world of the politics. >> rose: see what the potential is by doing it the way you did the first two seasons. >> yes. >> rose: what is the attraction between the two of them? >> oh, i think it's deep monumental. >> rose: love of power. well, i think there's a lot of things going on. you know i mean people seem to be very intrying to by them and often say well, they're so unconventional. i say, really? how many conventional marriages do you know, number one, and how many marriages do you know that aren't exactly that -- a partnership, a bond something which two people might have tremendous respect and love for each other but they also might be in the family business, as you indicate. i don't think that they're that unusual as a couple. now there may be people who say, well but they're obsessed with power and they want it so bad. but i would say that it's maybe one of the reasons why people like looking at them so much is they do recognize things in both of them that are more familiar. >> rose: roll tape. this is a clip i think you've selected. take a look at this and see what it says. >> if this is going to be johnny carson, i'll be really surprised, if i selected it. >> do you likely want to discuss courage, claire? because anyone can commit suicide or spout their mouth in front of the camera. but you want to know what takes real courage? keeping your mouth shut no matter what you might be feeling. holding it all together when the stakes are this high. >> we're murders francis. no, we're not, we're survivors. >> if we can't show respect for one brave man and still accomplish what we set out to do then i'm disappointed with both of us. >> i should have never made you ambassador. >> i should have never made you president. >> rose: is the central theme through all of this what price of power? >> yeah, you know what -- as it has been through greek drama, most of shakespeare -- >> rose: the price of power. yeah. for whatever reason, people have been drawn toward fascinated by these examinations of this very idea. >> rose: what people will do for power. they'll commit crimes, lie, cheat, steal. >> and what's interesting, too, if you go back the last 15 years of television, we've had so many interesting examples of characters that are in some way anti-heros, characters that are quite complex and yet the very characters that audiences just adore. you know walter, dexter, tony to spraino so the road has been paved very well for us by the time we arrived. >> rose: i like the idea frank is one part dexter and one part walter white. an interesting thought. >> absolutely. >> rose: so what's the relationship between the two of them? because we see her now wanting to be ambassador to the united nations. >> as was eleanor roosevelt. >> rose: which she was not the ambassador. she was -- >> she became an ambassador after his presidency, not during and it was a presidential appointment. >> rose: right. i think women have been doing incredibly well in politics. we certainly don't have enough women senators or female congress persons but i think there's no doubt our country is moving, advancing, growing, women are finding their voice and place and men are sometimes beginning to listen, but frank definitely listens to claire. >> rose: because it helps him get what he cares most about in life. >> she's smarter than him. >> rose: is power more important than sex? >> not on a sunday night. come on! >> rose: so his bisexuality comes into this right some. >> yeah sphoo and how does that play a role here, because there's the biographer tom yates. >> it's one of the areas that in the show we haven't been afraid to explore or demonstrate. >> rose: was will much discussion of that? the first bisexual president. >> oh, you think, really? >> rose: i don't know. charlie... >> rose: i don't know! come on haven't you done your research? >> rose: not that well! (laughter) no but tell me more about this. it's something that adds to the mix. >> yeah, yeah, absolutely, and adds to the soup. i think if frank didn't declare himself something one way or the other, you know, whether he called himself -- i had a journalist recently say so what's it like playing a closeted gay man? i said, well, i don't think he is. i think he might call himself bisexual, but apparently he was young and we ex explored this in the first season, he had a deep affected and perhaps love for a narrowly cadet and we explored that idea. >> rose: but does it say anything about power sharing? we'll share power and men? >> it's affect interesting in life which a lot of people are going through all kinds of questions about their own sexuality and an area we were never afraid to tackle and it's been very interesting seeing the reaction to it. by the way, here's my favorite thing some people literally would write on twitter, i was disgusted at that scene land never watch the show again. i'll go okay so the murdering you weren't bothered by but if he makes out with another guy that's it, that's where you cross the line... come on grow up. >> rose: so what do we expect to see in terms of the development of the characters? >> the remarkable pressures both claire and frank come under and different story lines in terms of governance and what's happening in the wompletd suddenly it's no longer about a congressman dealing with issues in his particular state or even washington, d.c., it's not world politics. this is now a big stage in which every decision you make is going to have repercussions and vibrations and difficulties and some people will agree with it and some people won't. so i think the world has gotten much big snore what's interesting about this, too, is, one you have a russian president who's involved here what's the name -- >> petrov. >> rose: same last name, putin. why does he do that? do your writers share the qualities they see in vladimir putin? >> i think it's interesting the world we exist in. on the one hand, "house of cards" is a fictional world, no doubt about it, although journalists do appear in "house of cards." so it sort of sets it in reality. then we obviously -- >> rose: that's why you put the journalists in there. >> that's why we put them in there. that's what's real. (laughter) then the real world in real world politics which is very different but obviously there are lots of people who like to comment on, well, are you trying to say this about the world? >> rose: i'm interested in that. >> there is a parallel universe happening. what's been most interesting about this in both season one and two and now three we'll have discussions about what we want to tackle, the areas we want to go down, the roads we want to travel, and then bo and his team will write them and then we will shoot them. then about three months later, something like what we just did will happen in the world. >> rose: in the real world. yeah. and we'll go, people are going to think we ripped this from the headlines. >> rose: when it finally gets on the air -- >> by the time it airs, they will think we ripped this off but actually we're not. what i think is interesting, and this may be just because bo and his team happen to have their pulse and finger on a particular part of the world. >> rose: and are political junkies. >> definitely political junkies, that they manage to always be a step ahead of what they can see coming down the road. and it's been interesting for us literally many all three seasons this has happened. so here's my plan -- we write an episode where $550 billion gets put into the arts tbhujt the government and -- budget in the government and let's see if we can make it happen. >> rose: what a great thing that would be. fantastic. does frank like frank? >> i think frank probably likes parts of frank and frank probably hates parts of frank just like all of sny's and the parts -- >> rose: and the parts he doesn't like he thinks are necessary? >> well, i don't know. that's a good question. again it's a little bit asking me to judge him. >> rose: you don't want to judge him because you are him and therefore -- >> yeah, because then how could you not wear that on your sleeve, you know? i need to just play him. >> rose: well, do you like him? >> i like playing him. >> rose: because i'm told the best actors will say they have to find something about the person they're playing they like. even the guy on death row. >> meryl streep said a couple of times, i think this is interesting from an acting standpoint, that she always, whatever character she plays, she creates a secret that only she knows that's never revealed and no other characters know and always gives her an inner life in which something is going on that nobody knows about so that she can always have an active mind, no matter what scene. >> rose: i know people who have said they can't get into the head of a character until the clothes of a character. >> that's also sometimes true. it's weird it can work in ways where you really need to understand what drives a character. but sometimes it is actually like when you finally put on their clothes, step in their shoes -- i use that metaphorically and physically that you start to find the posture. i used in math class in juilliard, there are 20 kinds of masks, old and young man masks, and when you put mask on and look in the mirror and your face goes away you become liberated, your body does things you wouldn't want your body to do because you're seeing yourself, but when you take away that and your own face and you can start to see yourself as someone else that, to me, is the greatest compliment that i can ever feel as an actor is when people stop me on the street and talk about the character i've played as if it was a three-dimensional person. they don't talk about me, they say the character's name and i think, i think i did my job. >> rose: if you -- if an actor or writer had done that for you, you create somebody who has flesh and blood -- >> the character comes true. it's interesting we live in a world where we know so much about people and their lives and their courtships and their ups and downs and this and that. i remember when i used to go to the cinema when i was younger, the new art theater and watch henry fonda and spencer tracy and jimmy stewart and gene kelly, they were who they were. i knew nothing about them. i believed henry fonda was jode, that jimmy stewart was mr. smith. i went to those places. it was extraordinary -- >> rose: was that because they were such good actors. >> they were good actors and we didn't live in a world -- >> rose: in a world where we knew everything. >> yeah, and it was interesting people would say how could you have done that in that show? and you go, well, it wasn't me. i'm playing a character. it isn't me doing it. i'm serving the writing. it's like when actors used to get slapped by people on seventh avenue for the way they treated their wife in a soap opera. >> rose: how could you do that! (laughter) >> but there's an interesting thing that happened that the delineation, the line that exists between what an actor might do in their own life that people might find questionable or offensive and what a character does which is not the actor. it's what the actors do. i played this character. it's not a real person, and it doesn't mean i did it. it means my character did it. >> rose: where do you pit this character in terms of an acting career? >> well, for me, it's particularly important experience for me and came along at a particularly important time because, you know when i decided to move to london 11, 12 years ago to run the old vick theater, there were a whole lot of people who thought i was really out of my mind, that people said i'm walking away from a film career that it was crazy that my film career was over, and there was a lot of sort of commentary about that. i viewed it as i was walking towards something. and now that i'm at the end of my time alt the old vic athafter this round of clarence darrow, i know it's the best decision i could have made. i know the experiences i've had at the old vic in this 11 years i have been artistic director but i've also acted in a play or two plays every year for the last 11 years, that all of those experiences and working with the directors and playing the parts made me a better actor. i wouldn't have been ready for frank underwood. >> rose: and gave you a better life, probably. >> absolutely. it's been remarkable in terms of the timing of it, but also where i am as a person, what i learned about running a company what i learned about having an incredibly brilliant and large staff, what i learned about fundraising, because we get no public subsidy at the old vic. >> rose: were you ready in your life for this? had you come to a conclusion that yes it was risk, abandoning a film, i'm an oscar winner, all that stuff. >> i just tried to follow my heart. i didn't worry about what if this or that. i didn't have a whole lot of debates about whether i would go to london and do this thing. i decided to and told everybody i was. >> rose: you're not just an actor, you're running the old vic. did they come after you, you go after them? >> what happened, i was at the old vic doing the ice man cometh in '98, i was asked to go on a committee to try to help find an artistic director, and in the end of '99, i had a kind of epiphany and as close to dick cheney as i'll ever get i threw my own name in the ring -- >> rose: did you, really? i didn't know that. >> that's how it happened. >> rose: you were dick cheney for a moment. have you thought about moi? (laughter) >> well, it struck me i had dreamed of running a theater my whole life. when i went to school with val kilmer and we went to high school and val lived in roy rogers old ranch on trigger street named for his horse my production company is called trigger street because val and i dreamed when we were 15 and 16 years old of building a theater on trigger street and we were going to do plays and all that stuff and while the theater never happened the idea of trigger street felt like this endless road where you could do anything. when i decided to name the company, it didn't become my first pet or my mother's maiden name, it became the idea of what trigger street could be. and the fact we produced 21 and social network and captain phillips has been a very successful company and i'm very proud of the work that danny bernetti and i have been able to do that. >> rose: can we talk about your bromance with blinten? >> we've known each other a long time, had a lot of different experiences over the years ago, first second terms, i did great number of things for him at the white house democratic party, host add lot of things and did a lot of things on the campaign, and i suppose that perhaps i never waited to see which way the wind was going to blow with respect to him. i was always there. and i was a true friend. and never doubted him, never stopped believing in him. thought he was an extraordinary man. >> rose: and took him as he was. >> took him as he was. and i think that may be part of the reason why we became close. >> rose: and are you close to her as well. not as close to her. i haven't spent as much time with her as him. but quherch we're together i always have a very nice time with both of them. i recently hosed an evening at the clinton presidential library for their tenth anniversary of that library but also the start of the clinton foundation and there was a -- someone took a photograph of the three of us on stage and i tweeted this thing that said three kinds of presidents -- former potential and streaming... (laughter) >> rose: yeah. could you imagine what you would have done if it hadn't been acting or were you one of those people who said if i hadn't done acting i would have been miserable. >> it's all i ever knew from the time i was about eight, i knew i wanted to be an actor. >> rose: never doubted never -- >> no. and i was lucky my mother never doubted it. my father eventually came along and realized it was working out. >> rose: he didn't know any actors. >> well, he was nervous i was choosing a profession that would be very difficult so he wanted me to have something to fall back on. >> rose: and he knew he was right. >> eventually, he realized i was doing all right. so i was very fortunate that i knew what i wanted to do very early on because i remember so many of my friends in high school who went on to college, didn't know what they wanted to be took a lot of courses, changed their minds then took a lot of courses, and some people didn't figure out what they wanted to do till they were in their late 20s or 30s. so i feel very blessed i knew so early on. >> rose: now that you're leaving the old vic what's your life going to be is this. >> i don't know yet. >> rose: what do you want it to be? >> i don't know yet. i mean, one of the great things is now i will have obviously, more time. although the last three years i've spent more time shooting "house of cards" than any other job i did because i made this vow to myself before i started the old vic i wouldn't take a job to take me away more than eight weeks of shooting so i only did two jobs in the first nine seasons that took me away for eight weeks. but now that i will have more timel r think i definitely want to do more singing. i think i'm definitely going to do more of that. >> rose: are you serious? yeah. recently i sang with billy joel where he got the gershwin prize. i did a concert in d.c. china, in miami last year. >> rose: this is great because you could come out on stage and sing and talk about your life and acting and go into a song and weave it all together. >> yeah. soim loving that and enjoying it because it's a very different kind of performance. it's not like you're hiding behind a charge. there's nothing between you and the audience. >> rose: just your voice. it's just an extraordinary challenge and i love doing it? how would you do this, though? would you just start taking dates and, you know -- >> well first, you've got to get the costume right. >> rose: no, you don't. well, elvis would be interesting. i just did a film about elvis. you know, i got to play another president. you know, there's a great story about when elvis pressley went to nixon. >> rose: tell us the story. elvis pressley was 1970 very concerned about where the united states was all the prozests were going on, the drug culture, people weren't respecting the presidency, burning the flag. he flew to washington, d.c., wrote a letter to president nixon in which he basically wanted nix ton make him an undercover federal agent-at-large. >> rose: didn't he come up with a badge? >> they gave him a badge. i did a film where i play richard nixon and michael shannon who is phenomenal plays elvis pressley. ist a remarkable story -- >> rose: based on facts? based on facts, yeah. we had both elvis' guy and the guy who was at the white house under nixon who supervised that meeting and made it happen, absolutely fascinating. >> reporter: let's assume the answer to do you continue to learn as an actor as yes. how is it that you will continue to learn as an actor? >> because storytelling allows us to learn things about ourselves examine things about other human beings that we might not necessarily agree with or understand entirely, that there is something very humanizing about the role of being an actor, and that the most remarkable thing about it is that we can write our own endings. >> rose: mmm... and we can make something -- i just had this extraordinary experience in the middle east with my foundation where we'd try to -- i wanted to do a project called homegrown which is to try to encourage the leaders there that while building national theaters with all the facilities that you can want is a wonderful thing farming in cirque du soleil is not necessarily the answer in terms of developing your own cultural identity and having work written about your country. so we did a project called homegrown in which we auditioned 300 emerging actors from 17 different nations and put together a group of 34 of them and they represented yemen saudi arabia, egypt, tunisia, turkey, palestine, israel, u.a.e. and several others, there were 12 countries represented, and brought together in sharza outside of dubai to do a play we wrote for them. what was quite remarkable was bringing them all together, some of them had never traveled outside the region some had never been on the airplane, and for the men, egypt in saudi arabia, they had never been on stage with women before. it was incredibly powerful the night we did this event because i believe that sometimes you can do things and you can say things and achieve things culturally that you can't politically and we hope to continue this program for the next five years. >> rose: clearly you can, and you can open up people's eyes an hearts to the possibilities of human kind. >> yeah. >> rose: so you're back in the u.s., you're back acting. what else fills your day? >> learning. learning lines when i'm trying to do a play. >> rose: is that getting easier or harder? >> well, maybe one of the most challenging things is this current production of clarence darrow i'm doing which is a one-man show. so i'm on stage for 90 minutes -- >> rose: you're perfect for that. >> -- and clarence darrow had this remarkable life, scopes trial leopold love case and what's most interesting about doing this play which was originated by henry fonda did it in 1974 is that every single issue that clarence darrow was fighting for or against in the late 1800s and early 1900s we are still tbrapling with -- grappling with today, every single issue, we are still trying to get it right. he's such a remarkable figure. i've had a chance to play him on two other different occasions. i did a pbs film about his life 20-something years ago and inherit the wind at the old vic about five years ago. so there's two things i've never done. i've never done a one-man show and never done a show in the round because we reconfigured the old vic for this season to be a theater in the round. what that means is there's nowhere to hide. they're everywhere and they're very close. i have a stage that's not much bigger than this platform that we're sitting down. and it's just a remarkable experience to be that intimate with an audience and also, in britain, particularly, though i hope to bring the play to the united states they don't know clarence darrow the way we do in this country so it's literally watching an audience discover this man's life and what he did and what an incredible voice he was, and his sort of home-spun logic and arguments that he made. you know he defended 102 men against the death penalty and not a single one was hanged. a pretty remarkable record. >> rose: one of the great trial lawyers of our history. "ice man cometh," where do you put that? >> one of the great seminal experiences of my life. it came along just at the right moment. i had been working in film and television i think since -- i hadn't done a play since i did a play at the manhattan theater. i needed to do a play. and this play came along, the idea of working with howard davies and doing this o'neil epic work just was the perfect moment for me to have tackled it. of course, because we ended up moving it to the old vic it's a seminal moment because it's where i fell in love with the old vic and ended up moving to london. >> rose: it's a classic piece. a great piece. they've actually been doing a very successful run of it. the production with nathan and brian has done well. >> rose: any character you have been waiting to play? >> no, not really. i don't really covet parts. usually it's about what a director wants me to do and says, hearings i'd love you to try this part. >> rose: it comes to you rather than you pursuing it? >> yea i've never coveted, oh, i've got to play that role. it's more the way a director sees me and wants to work with me. >> rose: but have there been times when you say i've got to do this because all great actors have stopped at this place, whether hamlet or -- >> yeah, it's possible. there might be a few down the road. i probably should play the father in long day's journey since i played the drunken alcoholic broth snore "house of cards," third season, kevin spacey. thank you. >> nice to see you. >> rose: pleasure. thank you for joining us. see you next time. for more about this program and earlier episodes, visit us online at pbs.org and charlierose.com. captioning sponsored by rose communications captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org this is "nightly business report" with tyler mathisen and sue herera. wall street wallops. stocks turn negative for the year as the dollar soars and investors grow concerns about when the federal reserve will make its next move. dollar drama. the fast and furious rise in the greenback is jarring markets across the globe hitting energy and potentially pressuring profits of u.s. companies. we examine the consequences. game changer? could hbo's new service potentially shake up the television industry as we know it? all that and more tonight on "nightly business report" for tuesday, march 10th. good evening, everyone and welcome. send your children to another room. cover the ears of the impressionable. it was an x-rated day on wall stre

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