John Lithgow is a living legend. He is an actor who is impossible to typecast. Throughout his 48-year career on both stage and screen we have seen him in such diverse roles as a goofy alien patriarch on 3rd Rock from the Sun, a serial killer on Dexter, and Winston Churchill on The Crown. In his latest role on HBO’s reboot of Perry Mason, in yet another pitch perfect performance, Lithgow plays E.B. Jonathan, a once celebrated San Francisco lawyer who is now struggling with irrelevance.
Last week, I caught up with John Lithgow via video call for a quick chat about his career and how he never fails to surprise us with the parts he plays.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Umapagan Ampikaipakan: I was looking back at all of the roles you’ve done, and I’ve seen you duke it out with Sylvester Stallone in Cliffhanger and play the crazy alien in 3rd Rock from the Sun. I’ve seen you “ACTING!” on SNL. And it occurred to me that I have absolutely no idea how you pick the parts you play. You’ve done every possible genre and I was wondering what it is about a script, about a role, that makes you go: “Yes.”
John Lithgow: You know, I do a lot less choosing than you would think. The really good jobs are few and far between. When you see a good piece of work and there are good people involved. You say “yes.” And very often it’s a big leap of faith. Very often, people are asking me to play parts that I myself don’t think I’m capable of playing. That I’m, in fact, afraid to play. Just imagine me being asked to play Winston Churchill, or Roberta Muldoon, or Roger Ailes. In every case, it was like, are they crazy? But it’s very good for an actor to stay wide open to experiences and allow yourself to be someone else’s brainstorm. I’m a very, very lucky actor, because quite early on, I established myself as a character man. As someone who plays very, very different roles.
I grew up in a theater family. My father produced Shakespeare. And when you think about Shakespeare, and his whole canon of plays, he wrote for a company of actors. And in their repertory they had Hamlet, but they also had Comedy of Errors. They had Macbeth, but they also had The Merry Wives of Windsor. These actors were ready to play anything. An actor who plays Iago one night might play Sir Andrew Aguecheek the next night. And I acted in my father’s companies. To me, the whole fun of acting was being as different as you could possibly be, night after night, and have the same audiences watch you play different parts and have the great fun of saying: “Oh my God. What is he going to do next?” Turns out that’s just exactly what my career has been. I didn’t plan it that way.
But, you know, if you think about the very first things I was known for, it was Terms of Endearment, Roberta Muldoon and The World According to Garp, Footloose, Buckaroo Banzai, Harry and the Hendersons…
UA: … The Twilight Zone…
JL: … yes, The Twilight Zone. All these very extreme characters, and all of them quite different from each other. And therefore, I got known for all these different things. Then along came 3rd Rock from the Sun, and I became known for screwball comedy too. So, my options were wide open. That’s why I’m still working at age 74. So why stop now?
UA: John, Don Quixote is one of my favorite novels. And it is a role you took on back in 2000. And I just wanted to talk to you about the lessons in Don Quixote and about how it relates to today’s world. It feels like we need some of that quixoticism today. God knows the world feels so dark and dismal.
JL: Well, you know, I wish I could kiss you. You’re the first person to ask me about Don Quixote in about 10 years. It was a fantastic experience. I mean, I’m not sure I was all that good in that part. In a way, you sort of had to be much more bizarre, peculiar, and almost startling. Just as a person. As a physical person. I wish I was like 30 pounds thinner, scrawny, and gaunt.
I really wanted to be that in order to play Don Quixote. The great thing was, just as you say, immersing yourself in that incredible piece of writing. Don Quixote is a book that’s that thick. It’s like reading the Bible. It’s got so many, many more stories than anybody is even aware of. Unless you happen to be Spanish or a Spanish scholar.
And to go to Spain, to work with an enormous amount of Spanish crew, to ride around the countryside in full armor on a scrawny horse with my dear Bob Hoskins next next to me on a little donkey playing Sancho. It was just an out of body experience. I thought, “my God, I am so lucky to be an actor.” What do you learn from Don Quixote? I don’t know. Certainly you learn that optimism can save your life. Because we experience horrors. You know, we’re living through horrors right now, but we’re never far away from tragedy. And it’s always good to just have that sort of insane optimism to fall back on. If I learned anything from Don Quixote, it was that.
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