JOHN A. LITHGOW, THE BEST CINEMA FROM ROCHESTER

Today, The Grandma has been reading about John Lithgow, the American actor who was born on a day like today in 1945.

John Arthur Lithgow (October 19, 1945) is an American actor. 

 

Lithgow studied at Harvard University and the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art before becoming known for his work on the stage and screen.

He has been the recipient of numerous accolades, including two Golden Globe Awards, six Primetime Emmy Awards, three Screen Actors Guild Awards, and two Tony Awards. He has also received nominations for two Academy Awards, a BAFTA Award, and four Grammy Awards. 

Lithgow has received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and he was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame.

In 1972, Lithgow made his film debut in Dealing: Or the Berkeley-to-Boston Forty-Brick Lost-Bag Blues.

In 1973, Lithgow made his Broadway debut in The Changing Room for which he received his first Tony Award.

In 1976, Lithgow acted alongside Meryl Streep in the plays 27 Wagons Full of Cotton, A Memory of Two Mondays and Secret Service at The Public Theatre. He received Tony Award nominations for Requiem for a Heavyweight (1985), M. Butterfly (1988), and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (2005). 

In 2002, Lithgow received his second Tony Award, this time for a musical, The Sweet Smell of Success.

In 2007, he made his Royal Shakespeare Company debut as Malvolio in Twelfth Night. He returned to Broadway in the plays The Columnist (2012), A Delicate Balance (2014), and Hillary and Clinton (2019).

Lithgow 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 for his performance. He also played Arthur Mitchell in the drama Dexter (2009) for which he won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama. 

In 2004, Lithgow played Blake Edwards in the HBO movie The Life and Death of Peter Sellers. He has also appeared on 30 Rock, How I Met Your Mother, and Louie. Lithgow portrayed Winston Churchill in the Netflix drama The Crown (2016–2019) receiving a Primetime Emmy Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award. He starred in HBO's Perry Mason (2020) and FX's The Old Man (2022).

Last, he is famous for his film roles. His early screen roles included Bob Fosse's All That Jazz (1979) and Brian De Palma's Blow Out (1981). He received Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor nominations for his breakout performance in The World According to Garp (1982) and his role in Terms of Endearment (1983).

He then starred in the films Footloose (1984), Harry and the Hendersons (1987), The Pelican Brief and Cliffhanger (1993), A Civil Action (1998), Rugrats in Paris: The Movie (2000), Shrek (2001), Kinsey (2004), Dreamgirls (2006), Love Is Strange (2014), Miss Sloane (2016), Beatriz at Dinner (2017), Late Night, and Bombshell (both 2019), and Killers of the Flower Moon (2022).

More information: Twitter-John Lithgow

Lithgow was born on October 19, 1945, in Rochester, New York. His mother, Sarah Jane Lithgow (1917-2012), was a retired actress. His father, Arthur Washington Lithgow III (1915-2004) was a theatrical producer and director who ran McCarter Theatre in Princeton, New Jersey. His father was born in Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic, to a European-American family; his great-grandfather was a vice consul and vice commercial agent in the country. He is the third of four children and has three siblings: an older brother David Lithgow, an older sister Robin Lithgow, and a younger sister Sarah Jane Boaker.

On the show Finding Your Roots, Lithgow discovered that he is a descendant of eight Mayflower passengers, including colonial governor William Bradford. Because of his father's job, the family moved frequently during Lithgow's childhood. He spent his childhood years in Yellow Springs, Ohio, where activist Coretta Scott King was his babysitter. He spent his teenage years in Akron (living at Stan Hywet Hall) and Lakewood, Ohio.

Lithgow graduated from Princeton High School in 1963. He then studied history and English literature at Harvard College. Lithgow lived in Adams House as an undergraduate and later served on Harvard's Board of Overseers. He credits a performance at Harvard of Gilbert and Sullivan's Utopia Limited with helping him decide to become an actor. He was a pupil of dramatist Robert Chapman who was the director of Harvard's Loeb Drama Center.

Lithgow graduated from Harvard in 1967 with an A.B. magna cum laude and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. After he graduated, Lithgow won a Fulbright Scholarship to study at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. Also after graduation, he served as the Director of the Arts and Literature Department at WBAI, the Pacifica radio station in New York City.

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There's nothing like spending
an evening with an audience every night.

John Lithgow