John Lithgow
Acting
- Born:
- 1945-10-19
- Place of birth:
- Rochester, New York, USA
Biography
John Arthur Lithgow (born October 19, 1945) is an American actor. He studied at Harvard University and the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art before becoming known for his diverse work on stage and screen. He has received numerous accolades, including six Primetime Emmy Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, and two Tony Awards, as well as nominations for two Academy Awards, a British Academy Film Award, four Grammy Awards, four Screen Actors Guild Awards, and a Laurence Olivier Award. Lithgow won two Tony Awards, his first for Best Featured Actor in a Play for his Broadway debut in The Changing Room (1972) and his second for Best Actor in a Musical for the musical Sweet Smell of Success (2002). He was Tony-nominated for Requiem for a Heavyweight (1985), M. Butterfly (1988), and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (2005). He has acted in the plays The Columnist (2012), A Delicate Balance (2014), and Hillary and Clinton (2019). He portrayed Roald Dahl in the play Giant on the West End, for which he was nominated for the Olivier Award for Best Actor. He starred as Dick Solomon in the television sitcom 3rd Rock from the Sun (1996–2001), winning three Primetime Emmy Awards for Best Actor in a Comedy Series. He received further Primetime Emmy Awards for his performances as Arthur Mitchell in the drama Dexter (2009) and as Winston Churchill in the Netflix drama The Crown (2016–2019). He also starred in HBO's Perry Mason (2020) and FX's The Old Man (2022). On film, he has received two Academy Awards for Best Supporting Actor nominations for his roles as a transgender ex-football player in The World According to Garp (1982) and a lonely banker in Terms of Endearment (1983). He also acted in All That Jazz (1979), Blow Out (1981), Footloose (1984), Harry and the Hendersons (1987), A Civil Action (1998), Shrek (2001), Kinsey (2004), Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011), Love Is Strange (2014), Interstellar (2014), Late Night (2019), Bombshell (2019), Killers of the Flower Moon (2023), and Conclave (2024).
Known For
Filmography
Harry Potter
Giant
Finding Harry: The Craft Behind the Magic
Jimpa
Dexter: Resurrection
The Rule of Jenny Pen
SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night
Spellbound
Conclave
Art Happens Here with John Lithgow
Cabrini
Dick Van Dyke: 98 Years of Magic
Killers of the Flower Moon
Liv Ullmann: A Road Less Travelled
Sharper
Chez Bob
Sherri
The Old Man
The Bubble
Live in Front of a Studio Audience: The Facts of Life and Diff'rent Strokes
Dexter: New Blood
Show of Titles
Emily @ the Edge of Chaos
Myths and Hymns
Give My Regards to Broadway
Perry Mason
Stars in the House
Bombshell
On Broadway
The Kelly Clarkson Show
The Investigation: A Search for the Truth in Ten Acts
The Tomorrow Man
Pet Sematary
Late Night
Pet Sematary: The Tale of Timmy Baterman
Firing Line with Margaret Hoover
James Cameron's Story of Science Fiction
Mister Rogers: It's You I Like
The Great Celebrity Bake Off for Stand Up To Cancer
Pitch Perfect 3
Daddy's Home 2
The Pulitzer At 100
Beatriz at Dinner
Trial & Error
Hickory Dickory Doc
They All Saw a Cat
Miss Sloane
The Crown
The Accountant
Shakespeare Live! From the RSC
Ode to Joy: Beethoven's Symphony No. 9
The Late Show with Stephen Colbert
Close Up with The Hollywood Reporter
Best of Enemies
Lord John
Inside 'Interstellar'
Projections of America
The Late Late Show with James Corden
Variety Studio: Actors on Actors
Interstellar
The Roosevelts: An Intimate History
The Jungle Bunch 2: The Great Treasure Quest
Love Is Strange
The Homesman
Late Night with Seth Meyers
The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon
9 Kisses
Timms Valley
Marvin Hamlisch: What He Did For Love
Once Upon a Time in Wonderland
Shrek Stories
National Theatre Live: The Magistrate
This Is 40
Casting By
The Campaign
Finding Your Roots
Shrek: Once Upon a Time
New Year's Eve
Prohibition
Rise of the Planet of the Apes
Conan
Leap Year
Miracle in a Box: A Piano Reborn
Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen
The Macabre World of Lavender Williams
Confessions of a Shopaholic
Car of the Future
ShowBusiness: The Road to Broadway
The Graham Norton Show
Dreamgirls
Twenty Good Years
30 Rock
Dexter
The One Show
The Best of The Tony Awards: The Plays
The Great Robot Race: The DARPA Grand Challenge
Sangre
The Colbert Report
Einstein's Big Idea
The Apprentice: Martha Stewart
How I Met Your Mother
The Life and Death of Peter Sellers
Footloose: A Modern Musical
The Tony Danza Show
Kinsey
Shrek 3-D
Dogs and More Dogs
VH1 Goes Inside
DreamWorks 6 Spooky Stories Collection
Jimmy Kimmel Live!
Bark, George
Live from E!
Orange County
Buckaroo Banzai Declassified
Shrek in the Swamp Karaoke Dance Party
Shrek
Rugrats in Paris: The Movie
Don Quixote
95 Worlds and Counting
The Early Show
Saturday Night Live: 25th Anniversary Special
Tales from the Crypt: The Robert Zemeckis Collection
A Civil Action
Homegrown
Johnny Skidmarks
The View
Officer Buckle and Gloria
Hollow Point
Cosby
The West
The Daily Show
Special Effects: Anything Can Happen
The Rosie O'Donnell Show
3rd Rock from the Sun
The Tuskegee Airmen
Redwood Curtain
My Brother's Keeper
Silent Fall
Princess Caraboo
A Good Man in Africa
Masters of Illusion: The Wizards of Special Effects
World War II: When Lions Roared
American Cinema
The Country Mouse & the City Mouse: A Christmas Tale
Love, Cheat & Steal
The Pelican Brief
Frasier
Late Night with Conan O'Brien
The Wrong Man
Cliffhanger
Sylvester and the Magic Pebble
Stallone on the Edge: The Making of Cliffhanger
Raising Cain
At Play in the Fields of the Lord
Ricochet
The Boys
Amazing Stories: The Movie II
Memphis Belle
Ivory Hunters
John Lithgow's Kid-Sized Concert
Night of 100 Stars III
Happy Birthday, Bugs! 50 Looney Years
The Simpsons
Traveling Man
Tales from the Crypt
Out Cold
Distant Thunder
Harry and the Hendersons
The Amazing Bone
Baby Girl Scott
The Manhattan Project
Resting Place
Santa Claus: The Making of the Movie
Mesmerized
Santa Claus: The Movie
Amazing Stories
2010
The Glitter Dome
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension
Footloose
Goldilocks and the Three Bears
2010 : The Odyssey Continues
The Day After
Terms of Endearment
Twilight Zone: The Movie
Not in Front of the Children
Faerie Tale Theatre
The World According to Garp
I'm Dancing as Fast as I Can
Blow Out
Big Blonde
Mom, the Wolfman and Me
The Oldest Living Graduate
All That Jazz
Rich Kids
The Big Fix
Secret Service
Obsession
Saturday Night Live
NOVA
The Country Girl
Dealing: Or the Berkeley-to-Boston Forty-Brick Lost-Bag Blues
Film '72
Great Performances
The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson
Tony Awards
The Oscars
Today
Hallmark Hall of Fame
Golden Globe Awards
Broadway: The Next Generation