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(1945– ). American actor.
After knocking about Hollywood for a while— including a turn in Brian DE PALMA's Obsession
that nobody noticed— Lithgow became famous for his role in The
World According to Garp (1982), proving that a large man can be amusing and
affecting while wearing a dress. Of course, this is a skill that every British
comedian masters during basic training, but somehow an American actor doing the
same trick never fails to impress. Suddenly, the phone of Lithgow's agent was
constantly ringing, and any filmgoer during the mid–1980s soon found Lithgow
impossible to avoid.
Lithgow responded to these numerous opportunities in two ways: by blending
in with the scenery (The Day After, Terms of Endearment,
2010: The Year We Make Contact) or by chewing it (Twilight Zone—The Movie, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth
Dimension, Santa Claus: The Movie). To put it mildly, it is
hard to imagine anyone being impressed by any of these performances. If
you ever hear someone disparaging the acting skills of William SHATNER,
for example, all you have to do is to show them Shatner's effective performance
in The Twilight Zone's "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet," followed
by Lithgow's disastrous re-enactment in the film version.
Not only was he making audiences squirm, but
Lithgow may have served as a baleful influence on other performers; Christopher
LLOYD had once been a fairly subdued performer, but after they appeared
together in Buckaroo Banzai, Lloyd apparently decided that he would
henceforth emulate Lithgow's hopelessly over-the-top approach, eventually
destroying his own career in the process.
As Hollywood grew disillusioned with Lithgow, he
found himself with fewer and fewer opportunities to demonstrate stolid dullness
(The Manhattan Project) or inanity (Harry and the Hendersons). A
sharp decline in film offers naturally suggests a switch to television, and
Lithgow soon found himself starring in the science fiction sitcom Third Rock
from the Sun. Critical opinions of this series vary wildly. Some say that
the show offered scintillating satire, effectively conveyed by Lithgow's
brilliant comic acting; others (including myself) regarded it only as a blander
version of Mork and Mindy helmed by an uninspired actor doing what
scores of other performers might have done. Since its cancellation, reruns of Third
Rock from the Sun have been conspicuously unavailable, at least on the
broadcast and cable networks available in Los Angeles, and nobody seems to be
clamoring for a big reunion special, suggesting that its skeptic observers are
now being vindicated.
If one can't make it in television, one of the
next rungs down the ladder is providing voices for animated films, and so it is
not surprising to find Lithgow contributing to Rugrats in Paris and Shrek
—although the producers of the second film for
some reason decided to kill off Lithgow's character so as to eliminate him from
the already-planned sequel. Having also demonstrated on television that he was
yet another actor who couldn't quite handle the character of Don Quixote,
Lithgow may finally be fading from view, ready for the dinner theatre circuit
or similar humiliations. Still, there is always the chance that an old
Hollywood friend, or some producer making his way down a long list of
possibilities, will someday call Lithgow's agent and give him one more chance
to recapture old glories.
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