
John Lithgow
Acting
John 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).
Known For

The Simpsons
1989 · tv

Dexter
2006 · tv

The Late Show with Stephen Colbert
2015 · tv

The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon
2014 · tv

The Kelly Clarkson Show
2019 · tv

The Daily Show
1996 · tv

Late Night with Seth Meyers
2014 · tv

Interstellar
2014 · movie

Golden Globe Awards
1944 · tv

How I Met Your Mother
2005 · tv

The Graham Norton Show
2007 · tv

The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson
1962 · tv

Frasier
1993 · tv

Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen
2009 · tv

The Crown
2016 · tv

The Late Late Show with James Corden
2015 · tv

NOVA
1974 · tv

Saturday Night Live
1975 · tv

Conan
2010 · tv

30 Rock
2006 · tv

Great Performances
1971 · tv

Shrek
2001 · movie

The View
1997 · tv

Jimmy Kimmel Live!
2003 · tv

The Colbert Report
2005 · tv

3rd Rock from the Sun
1996 · tv

Variety Studio: Actors on Actors
2014 · tv

The One Show
2006 · tv

Sherri
2022 · tv

The Old Man
2022 · tv