By Zoe Stagg
Photography by Gregg Delman
The hero, the fool, the sage, and the villain; these archetypes populate every story — and John Lithgow has played them all. He has a voice you would recognize anywhere, yet he never appears as what you’d expect. With his youth spent on the stage performing the classics, it makes sense. Lithgow is a one-man Shakespearian company; he plays the jester and the tyrant in repertory. From Shrek to Kinsey; Footloose to Dexter; The World According to Garp to Rise of the Planet of the Apes. The only common denominator in his body of work are his accolades: Emmys, Tonys, and Golden Globes, awarded because we will believe Lithgow is everything from a bumbling alien to a serial killer. “That really is the trick, isn’t it?” he says in a booming voice with a scholarly tone but an undercurrent of buffoon. “To make people forget everything you’ve ever done.”
From the perspective of our tabloid culture, that seems an odd notion for a celebrity. But it’s a perfectly reasonable goal for an actor — and that’s what Lithgow is. He is whatever you want him to be, and always has been. “Theater is the most transformative medium. You really do transform yourself from one job to another. To me, growing up, that was always the fun of acting. I would say that’s still what I enjoy. Every time I do a role, I think — if I’m lucky —it’s different from anything I’ve ever done before.” Getting that lucky isn’t as easy as it used to be. “There’s not as much choice in it as you would think. Of course you’re waiting for other people to have bright ideas. If you’re lucky, they surprise you. This next project I’m doing, a play called The Columnist, was a play that just got slipped to me by my agent and I read it and immediately thought, ‘Oh my God, I have to do this,’ because it was so new to me. I do feel that I’m a very lucky actor in that I have a chance to do many, many things.’
Included in those chances are a couple of recent unabashed performances of bold political satire on The Colbert Report. His first appearance, a dramatic reading of a Newt Gingrich press release, happened on short notice and drew giant attention. “I’m a huge fan of Stephen’s. I just think he’s our great satirist at the moment. He’s extremely smart and very, very sophisticated at what he does. He’s a big, big deal, but I still think he’s an underrated genius right now.” Lithgow’s follow-up was a voiceover for a Report spot called “Mitt the Ripper.” In it, presidential hopeful Mitt Romney is given the same… occupation… as Lithgow’s Dexter character. “I’m an actor for hire for Stephen. I’m a willing member of his gang. He’s the merry prankster, and I’m one of his acolytes. I’m very game because I just think he’s so brilliant.” Perhaps it’s because of their similar sensibilities? Lithgow deadpans, “I’m pretty good at that ‘taking yourself enormously seriously’ for comic effect.”
Of course, it’s primarily played for laughs on late-night television, but the reality is much more serious. “Our entire society right now is dominated by that ghastly Supreme Court decision, the Citizens United decision. This claim that corporations are people and therefore that political money flowing into electoral campaigns is free speech. I mean, this crazy notion is just completely polluting our politics. The whole voting population is looking on in horror as our politics turns into nothing but mudslinging, and it’s all because of Citizens United, as far as I can see.” Satire then provides the release of laughter with the information needed in a grim political landscape. “It’s got to change. This whole nonsense has got to be reversed.”
One of his upcoming projects, Dog Fight, fits right in with this train of thought. “In a way, it’s exactly the same wheelhouse [as The Colbert Report].” Lithgow has called it a “a wild political farce,” and with co-stars Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis, he can’t be far off. Luckily in this instance, the exaggerated landscape of reality cooperated. “We would do these scenes and think, ‘Oh my God, we’ve gone way too far.’ And then they’d go back to their hotel and watch that night’s Republican debate and breathe a huge sigh of relief that, ‘Wow. We’ve just been outdone by reality.” Though politics provides plenty of fodder for creativity, Lithgow isn’t as moved by the cause as the craft. “In every case, they’re asking me to come and do what I do, which is act my head off.”
As a comedic actor nominated for an Emmy every year Third Rock From the Sun aired [1996-2011], Lithgow has seen what triggers our giggles change. “I think there are sentimental comedies for a change. I think irony is giving way to sentiment in a lot of ways.” He can sense it, and between Dog Fight and the Judd Apatow-driven project This is 40, he’s been immersed in enough modern comedy to speculate as to why. “Perhaps it has to do with how scared we all are. Society is in such terrible trouble. The big moment of our lives for the past 30 years has been 9/11. And our economy is really scary as far as I can see, all young people are scared. They can’t get work, and their education doesn’t do for them what they had hoped. All those things are going on, and so I think that might have something to do with comedy becoming more sentimental than ironic. There’s a limit to how ironic you can be when you’re scared.”
There are monsters we can name, and those we don’t dare. “This is not even touching the big fear that I think people won’t even admit to themselves, that is: What’s going to happen to our environment 100 years from now?” His tone turns matter-of-fact, assessing the serious trouble that real “third rock” is heading toward. “I think everybody is deeply afraid of that.”
That thought aside, he’s taken to Twitter seamlessly. With tweets, from “Already suffering Downton Abbey withdrawals,” to “The AL Wild Card race is aging me. C’mon Boston! Pull your Sox up!” he’s created a charming way to figure out a little bit about the man behind the archetypes. “It feels very bizarre to send out little bulletins about yourself to thousands of people. It’s a weird, anonymous thing to do, like throwing bottles into the ocean. You never know who’s going to read them” But read them, people do – and he’s been able to harness that attention for a cause. “I had this wonderful experience in New Orleans, and meeting people from the St. Bernard Project. I had this strong feeling I could help them out just by mentioning their project and getting some volunteers down there.” The St. Bernard Project helps people still suffering the effects of Hurricane Katrina. “They’ve built about 500 houses from people who’ve lost their homes. They took me on a tour of the wards, and I spent the whole day crying. It was great to be able to throw that on Twitter rather than just talk about myself.”
It’s a wonder he has time for 140 characters let alone Twitter activism. Between his memoir, Drama — An Actor’s Education, upcoming movies, and special appearances with symphonies, he is right to note, “I’m busier than ever.” And we’re content to let him play all the roles in the company. After all, when we’re willing to award someone from their portrayal of a serial killer and let him write books for children, it’s clear a great deal of creative leeway has been earned. “When you become a well-known sitcom star, you can try all sorts of things and people are willing to give you a chance. That’s when I began performing seriously for children. People didn’t even know I was doing it. It was just a bright idea, and I had a chance to do it because I had a little clout.”
He’s taking that clout back to Broadway, a return to the stage home he’s never left, playing Joseph Alsop in David Auburn’s The Columnist. “Alsop has sort of dropped off the radar of history, yet he was an incredibly influential journalist and columnist back in the 1950s and 60s. It’s all about him, his extremely complicated personality. It’s an intensely personal story.” In a sea of “quantity over quality,” he’s thrilled. “It’s an incredible piece of writing. The play is extremely special. I haven’t been this excited about a project in years.”
And so the actor who’s played it all, has it all, musing playfully, yet altogether correctly, “I feel everyone has a right to envy me.”
Photography: Gregg Delman
Stylist: Elle Werlin
Groomer: Kumi Craig
Location: No Fun, ludlow st, nyc