John Lithgow

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).

Filmography (206 Appearances)

Harry Potter

Upcoming (2026)

Broadway: The Next Generation

TBA

Sequestered - Inside Conclave

TBA

Finding Harry: The Craft Behind the Magic

2026

Jimpa

2026

Dexter: Resurrection

2025

The Rule of Jenny Pen

2025

SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night

2025

Spellbound

2024

Conclave

2024

Art Happens Here with John Lithgow

2024

Cabrini

2024

Dick Van Dyke: 98 Years of Magic

2023

Killers of the Flower Moon

2023

Liv Ullmann: A Road Less Travelled

2023

Sharper

2023

Chez Bob

2022

Sherri

2022

The Old Man

2022

The Bubble

2022

Live in Front of a Studio Audience: The Facts of Life and Diff'rent Strokes

2021

Dexter: New Blood

2021

Show of Titles

2021

Emily @ the Edge of Chaos

2021

Myths and Hymns

2021

Give My Regards to Broadway

2020

Perry Mason

2020

Stars in the House

2020

Bombshell

2019

On Broadway

2019

The Kelly Clarkson Show

2019

The Investigation: A Search for the Truth in Ten Acts

2019

The Tomorrow Man

2019

Pet Sematary

2019

Late Night

2019

Pet Sematary: The Tale of Timmy Baterman

2018

Firing Line with Margaret Hoover

2018

James Cameron's Story of Science Fiction

2018

Mister Rogers: It's You I Like

2018

The Great Celebrity Bake Off for Stand Up To Cancer

2018

Pitch Perfect 3

2017

Daddy's Home 2

2017

The Pulitzer At 100

2017

Beatriz at Dinner

2017

Trial & Error

2017

Hickory Dickory Doc

2017

They All Saw a Cat

2017

Miss Sloane

2016

The Crown

2016

The Accountant

2016

Shakespeare Live! From the RSC

2016

Ode to Joy: Beethoven's Symphony No. 9

2016

The Late Show with Stephen Colbert

2015

Close Up with The Hollywood Reporter

2015

Best of Enemies

2015

Lord John

2015

Inside 'Interstellar'

2015

The Late Late Show with James Corden

2015

Projections of America

2015

Variety Studio: Actors on Actors

2014

Interstellar

2014

The Roosevelts: An Intimate History

2014

The Jungle Bunch 2: The Great Treasure Quest

2014

Love Is Strange

2014

The Homesman

2014

Late Night with Seth Meyers

2014

The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon

2014

9 Kisses

2014

Timms Valley

2013

Marvin Hamlisch: What He Did For Love

2013

Once Upon a Time in Wonderland

2013

Shrek Stories

2013

National Theatre Live: The Magistrate

2013

This Is 40

2012

Casting By

2012

The Campaign

2012

Finding Your Roots

2012

Shrek: Once Upon a Time

2011

New Year's Eve

2011

Prohibition

2011

Rise of the Planet of the Apes

2011

Conan

2010

Leap Year

2010

Miracle in a Box: A Piano Reborn

2009

Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen

2009

The Macabre World of Lavender Williams

2009

Confessions of a Shopaholic

2009

Car of the Future

2008

ShowBusiness: The Road to Broadway

2007

The Graham Norton Show

2007

Dreamgirls

2006

Twenty Good Years

2006

30 Rock

2006

Dexter

2006

The One Show

2006

The Best of The Tony Awards: The Plays

2006

The Great Robot Race: The DARPA Grand Challenge

2006

Sangre

2006

The Colbert Report

2005

Einstein's Big Idea

2005

The Apprentice: Martha Stewart

2005

How I Met Your Mother

2005

The Life and Death of Peter Sellers

2004

The Tony Danza Show

2004

Kinsey

2004

Dogs and More Dogs

2004

VH1 Goes Inside

2003

The Ghost of Lord Farquaad

2003

DreamWorks 6 Spooky Stories Collection

2003

Shrek 3-D

2003

Jimmy Kimmel Live!

2003

Bark, George

2003

Live from E!

2002

Orange County

2002

Buckaroo Banzai Declassified

2002

Shrek in the Swamp Karaoke Dance Party

2001

Shrek

2001

Rugrats in Paris: The Movie

2000

Don Quixote

2000

95 Worlds and Counting

2000

The Early Show

1999

Tales from the Crypt: The Robert Zemeckis Collection

1999

A Civil Action

1998

Homegrown

1998

Johnny Skidmarks

1998

The View

1997

Officer Buckle and Gloria

1997

Hollow Point

1996

Cosby

1996

The West

1996

The Daily Show

1996

Special Effects: Anything Can Happen

1996

The Rosie O'Donnell Show

1996

3rd Rock from the Sun

1996

The Tuskegee Airmen

1995

Redwood Curtain

1995

My Brother's Keeper

1995

Silent Fall

1994

Princess Caraboo

1994

A Good Man in Africa

1994

Masters of Illusion: The Wizards of Special Effects

1994

World War II: When Lions Roared

1994

American Cinema

1994

The Country Mouse & the City Mouse: A Christmas Tale

1993

Love, Cheat & Steal

1993

The Pelican Brief

1993

Frasier

1993

Late Night with Conan O'Brien

1993

The Wrong Man

1993

Cliffhanger

1993

Sylvester and the Magic Pebble

1993

Raising Cain

1992

At Play in the Fields of the Lord

1991

Ricochet

1991

The Boys

1991

Amazing Stories: The Movie II

1990

Memphis Belle

1990

Ivory Hunters

1990

John Lithgow's Kid-Sized Concert

1990

Night of 100 Stars III

1990

The Simpsons

1989

Traveling Man

1989

Tales from the Crypt

1989

Out Cold

1989

Distant Thunder

1988

Harry and the Hendersons

1987

The Amazing Bone

1987

Baby Girl Scott

1987

The Manhattan Project

1986

Resting Place

1986

Santa Claus: The Making of the Movie

1985

Mesmerized

1985

Santa Claus: The Movie

1985

Amazing Stories

1985

2010

1984

The Glitter Dome

1984

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension

1984

Footloose

1984

Goldilocks and the Three Bears

1984

2010 : The Odyssey Continues

1984

The Day After

1983

Terms of Endearment

1983

Twilight Zone: The Movie

1983

Not in Front of the Children

1982

Faerie Tale Theatre

1982

The World According to Garp

1982

I'm Dancing as Fast as I Can

1982

Blow Out

1981

Big Blonde

1980

Mom, the Wolfman and Me

1980

The Oldest Living Graduate

1980

All That Jazz

1979

Rich Kids

1979

The Big Fix

1978

Secret Service

1977

Obsession

1976

Saturday Night Live

1975

NOVA

1974

The Country Girl

1974

Dealing: Or the Berkeley-to-Boston Forty-Brick Lost-Bag Blues

1972 Debut

Great Performances

1971

The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson

1962

Tony Awards

1956

The Oscars

1953

Today

1952

Hallmark Hall of Fame

1951
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