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" If I don't enjoy it, there's something seriously wrong. There's a reason why they call it playing, what we do. It's ecstatic fun, and I overdo it - I mean, I can't seem to stop - people ask me to act, and I say yes. "

John Lithgow

People

Enjoy

Say

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" I don't deal with the nuts and bolts of life. "

" I owe my whole career as a storyteller to my father. He was an actor/director/producer and teacher. "

" I'm a con artist in that I'm an actor. I make people believe something is real when they know perfectly well it isn't. "

" Shakespeare is like mother's milk to me. "

" I auditioned for soap operas and commercials; I remember auditioning for Lays potato chips. It was a sort of 'Mutiny on the Bounty' sketch, where Captain Bligh was torturing the crew by saying, 'You can only have one Lays potato chip,' and they all rise up. "

" If you're an actor, you tend to fool yourself into thinking you're much younger than you are because you're playing parts and behaving like a child all the time. "

" The essence of comedy, drama, and horror is surprise. I have an uncanny ability to surprise people because they look at my face, and they don't know where I'm going. "

" Money is just a low priority for me. I'm more interested in good work than a big bank account. "

John Lithgow

Good Work

Money

" As an actor ages north of 60, he tends to be in more father roles than anything else. It's generational. And it tends to be a relationship that fascinates people, the flawed relationships between parents and kids. "

" My wife is a professor at UCLA in Los Angeles, but otherwise, I'd be right back living on the Upper West Side. "

" Whenever I play a role, it's like I've been kidnapped inside my own body. "

John Lithgow

Inside

Own

" I was married very young. I lived a very middle class life. I was married at age 21, divorced at 31. "

" If a film is about love, it tends to be about tortured love or discovering love or young love. It's not this wonderful kind of comfortable, old resilient love. "

" What fascinated me most was Churchill as a young child. He had a kind of Dickensian childhood. The neglect. And he was a terrible student. His whole life is a study in trying to overcome your feelings of inadequacy. "

John Lithgow

Life

Life Is A

" People have expectations from you - and the whole fun of acting is taking expectations and completely upending them. That's how you get laughs in comedy, and that's how you scare the daylights out of people in a horror film. "

" I am a storyteller, and the stories I tell are, when I'm lucky, really good ones. It's a very exciting thing to do with your life, and that's, I think, what keeps me hopeful. "

John Lithgow

Good

I Am

" Next to the word 'luvvie' in the dictionary, there's a picture of me. At least in the American editions. "

" When good things come along, you end up saying yes to them. Because they're rare. "

" My wife tells me I always have to have a project. A 'projectophile' or something. It's true. I always feel like the grass is growing under my feet. "

John Lithgow

Feel

True

" In 1995, I proposed the Harvard Arts Medal. The idea was to celebrate the fact that, although it's rare, Harvard men and women do go into the creative arts. Over the years we've had major, major figures, like Jack Lemmon, John Updike, Yo-Yo Ma, and Bonnie Raitt. "

" My sense of myself is that I'm a character actor, and character actors are ready, willing, and able to do anything, to be totally different from themselves. That's my job, to be ready. I'm some kind of first responder. "

" It's a delightful thing to do, to entertain kids. They're a completely different audience because of their total lack of irony. You're always after a total suspension of disbelief, but the only people you can really achieve it with is children. "

" It's very important to stay creative and not simply to wait around for people to want you. It's the hardest thing about the business. "

" If it's well written and well directed and you've got good actors to work with, acting is easy. But making sure all the ducks are in a row is the hard part. It's very rare. "

" To my mum, I owe security in a very insecure young life. We lived in about 10 different places because of my father's chequered career, and she always made me feel a sense of consistency and security. I was a well-mothered boy. "

John Lithgow

Consistency

Security

" My worst audition was for Tim Burton for 'Batman.' "

" It's a very tough time for the playwright. Broadway has become almost a musical comedy theme park with all these long-running shows. "

" If you read in front of your kids, it's very likely that they'll become readers, too. "

" What you aspire to on a sitcom is the feeling of live comedy. "