One of America’s most versatile and admired actors, award-winning stage and screen star John Lithgow has played heroes, villains, saints, sinners, a ballet-dancing elephant and a space alien. His new film, Love Is Strange, opens in three weeks, and he has begun rehearsals with Glenn Close for the Broadway revival of Edward Albee’s A Delicate Balance.
Lithgow has been nominated for 11 Emmy Awards. He has won five, three for his role on NBC’s 3rd Rock from the Sun, the hit comedy series, which also brought him a Golden Globe, two SAG Awards, and the American Comedy Award. In 2009, his portrayal of a conflicted serial killer in the Showtime series, Dexter, earned him another Golden Globe and his fifth Emmy.
Lithgow’s Broadway career includes a Tony Award for The Changing Room and nominations for Requiem for a Heavyweight, M. Butterfly, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and The Columnist. In 2002, he won both the Tony and Drama Desk awards as best actor in a Broadway musical for his performance in Sweet Smell of Success. He also received back-to-back Academy Award nominations for his work in The World According to Garp and Terms of Endearment.
Lithgow received his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2001, was inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame in 2005 and into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2010. He is the author of several best-selling books for kids, an acting memoir and editor of a collection of poetry, Poet’s Corner.
John Lithgow grew up in Ohio, graduated from Harvard College, and used a Fulbright Grant to study at the London Academy of Music & Dramatic Art. He is a 2011 Fulbright Lifetime Achievement Medal Recipient.
