- Home
- John Lithgow
John Lithgow
Known for: ActingJohn 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).
Filmography 89
3rd Rock from the Sun
as Dick Solomon 
Interstellar
as Donald 
Killers of the Flower Moon
as Prosecutor Peter Leaward 
Shrek
as Lord Farquaad (voice) 
The Accountant
as Lamar Blackburn 
Rise of the Planet of the Apes
as Charles Rodman 
Daddy's Home 2
as Don 
Pitch Perfect 3
as Fergus 
The Old Man
as Harold Harper 
Once Upon a Time in Wonderland
as The White Rabbit (voice) 
Conclave
as Tremblay 
The Pelican Brief
as Smith Keen 
Pet Sematary
as Jud Crandall 
Miss Sloane
as Senator Ronald Sperling 
Leap Year
as Jack Brady 
Cabrini
as Mayor Gould 
Terms of Endearment
as Sam Burns 
This Is 40
as Oliver 
Footloose
as Rev. Shaw Moore 
Blow Out
as Burke 
Confessions of a Shopaholic
as Edgar West 
Twilight Zone: The Movie
as Valentine 
Cliffhanger
as Qualen 
Late Night
as Walter Lovell 
Orange County
as Bud Brumder 
Bombshell
as Roger Ailes 
Spellbound
as Bolinar (voice) 
The Campaign
as Glen Motch 
The Homesman
as Reverend Alfred Dowd 
Rugrats in Paris: The Movie
as Jean-Claude (voice) 
Sharper
as Richard Hobbes 
The Day After
as Joe Huxley 
2010
as Dr. Walter Curnow 
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension
as Lord John Whorfin 
Dreamgirls
as Jerry Harris 
Shrek 3-D
as Ghost of Farquaad (voice) 
Prohibition
as Reader / H.L. Mencken (voice) 
A Civil Action
as Judge Walter J. Skinner 
Harry and the Hendersons
as George Henderson 
Ricochet
as Earl Talbott Blake 
The Roosevelts: An Intimate History
as James Roosevelt (voice) 
The West
as Self 
Jimpa
as Jimpa 
American Cinema
as Self - Host 
Memphis Belle
as Bruce Derringer 
Raising Cain
as Carter Nix / Cain / Dr. Nix / Josh / Margo 
The Rule of Jenny Pen
as Dave Crealy 
Santa Claus: The Movie
as B.Z. 
Kinsey
as Alfred Seguine Kinsey 
The World According to Garp
as Roberta Muldoon 
Obsession
as Robert Lasalle 
The Tuskegee Airmen
as Senator Conyers 
The Tomorrow Man
as Ed Hemsler 
Love Is Strange
as Ben 
Beatriz at Dinner
as Doug Strutt 
A Good Man in Africa
as Arthur Fanshawe, British High Commissioner 
The Big Fix
as Sam Sebastian 
The Manhattan Project
as John Mathewson 
The Life and Death of Peter Sellers
as Blake Edwards 
The Oldest Living Graduate
as Clarence 
Princess Caraboo
as Professor Wilkinson 
Resting Place
as Maj. Kendall Laird 
At Play in the Fields of the Lord
as Leslie Huben 
Redwood Curtain
as Laird Riordan 
Love, Cheat & Steal
as Paul Harrington 
World War II: When Lions Roared
as Franklin Delano Roosevelt 
Homegrown
as Malcolm / Robert Stockman 
On Broadway
as Self 
Silent Fall
as Dr. Rene Harlinger 
Live in Front of a Studio Audience: The Facts of Life and Diff'rent Strokes
as Philip Drummond 
Distant Thunder
as Mark Lambert 
Amazing Stories: The Movie II
as John Walters 
Best of Enemies
as Voice of Gore Vidal 
The Pulitzer At 100
as Self 
The Jungle Bunch 2: The Great Treasure Quest
as Maurice (voice) 
Traveling Man
as Ben Cluett 
Officer Buckle and Gloria
as Narrator (voice) 
I'm Dancing as Fast as I Can
as Mr. Brunner 
Out Cold
as Dave 
Emily @ the Edge of Chaos
as Sir Isaac Newton (voice) 
Mister Rogers: It's You I Like
as Self 
Mesmerized
as Oliver Thompson 
Johnny Skidmarks
as Sergeant Larry Skovik 
