john lithgow

Born on October 19, 1945, in Rochester, New York, to John Arthur Lithgow –his full name– his acting vocation runs in the family, both from his mother, the actress Sarah Jane Lithgow, and from his father, the businessman and theater director Arthur Washington Lithgow III, owner of the McCarter Theatre, Princeton. Considered a brainiac in his class from an early age, he studied History and English Literature at Harvard University, where he graduated Magna Cum Laude, sharing a campus with actor Tommy Lee Jones and later Vice President Al Gore. Thanks to a Fulbright scholarship he was able to enroll at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art.

“I decided to dedicate myself to acting in search of the affection of the public”, he commented on one occasion. “So I took advantage of the fact that I have creative energy in abundance.” At the beginning of his acting career, he shared the stage on several occasions with Meryl Streep, with whom he coincided in The Public Theater company, from his hometown. With “The Changing Room”, from 1973, he achieved his first Tony nomination, the most important North American theater award (he would later win two). He made his film debut in the forgotten Dealing: Or the Berkeley-to-Boston Forty-Brick Lost-Bag Blues , but John Lithgow was given his first major role by Brian de Palma , which made him Robert, a partner in the property developer he gives lifeCliff Robertson in Fascination , a covert remake of Alfred Hitchcock ‘s Vertigo . The Italian-American would rescue him for Impact and In the Name of Cain , where he gave life to Burke and Carter, fearsome serial killers.

Little by little he cemented an immense prestige on celluloid, for example with the character of Lucas Sergeant, Broadway director and choreographer, in the legendary All That Jazz (The show begins) . In the early 1980s, he won two Oscar nominations for Best Supporting Role for two literary adaptations, The World According to Garp and The Power of Endearment . But the young people of the 90s were left with his face when he gave life to the passenger of an airplane who discovered a demon destroying the wing, and everyone took him for a paranoid, in In the limits of reality. “He is my favorite character of all the ones I’ve played,” he would comment in an interview. During that time he had time to appear as the sadistic reverend against the music of Footloose , a doctor in 2010: Odyssey 2 , and a family man in Bigfoot and the Hendersons , an indescribable mess with the only attraction that John Lithgow brought to life. a normal and even endearing family man, who befriends an affable monster (a guy dressed up in a rather shabby suit).

In the 90s, John Lithgow became one of the official villains of the most commercial cinema, with titles such as Ricochet and Maximum risk , and later gave life to Arthur Mitchell, a cunning serial killer who appeared in the fourth season of Dexter , and became became the most remembered antagonist of the series. He also played the editor of The Washington Post, in The Pelican Brief , and a judge in Civil Action . The actor is quite good at bringing real characters to life, such as filmmaker Blake Edwards in Call Me Peter , the father of American biologist Alfred Kinsey in Kinsey, and especially the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, in the first season of The Crown . “I didn’t understand why they had chosen me for that character,” he recalls. “I am American and I am much taller. I was intimidated by the great actors who have played the character of late, like Gary Oldman . When I shot the first chapter under Stephen Daldry ‘s orders, I asked him why they thought of me. And his answer has me baffled. He told me that Churchill’s mother was also a Yankee.

He divorced in 1980, after fourteen years of marriage, from Jean Taynton, with whom he had two children, Ian – who follows in his footsteps as an actor – and Phoebe. He then mated with Mary Yeager, with whom he had Nathan, his third child. He is still active despite his advanced age, with titles like the series The Old Man , where he plays a CIA agent (“With the desire I had to work with Jeff Bridges and we spent a year filming the series separately”, he has commented), and Killers of the Flower Moon , in which he has been placed under the command of Martin Scorsese.