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" 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. "

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" I work very hard on motivating everything I do as an actor. Explosive moments have to be completely motivated; whether they're explosive comedy or explosive horror, they have to come organically out of a scene and an interaction with another actor. "

John Lithgow

Out

Comedy

Work

" 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. "

" I eat way too fast. "

" I actually was very proud of 'Dexter' and had a wonderful time doing it, which must make me an extremely weird person. "

" I went to - I got a wonderful college education. I went to Harvard. In those four years, I accumulated a lot of knowledge, but I also created a kind of habit of learning that has stayed with me my whole life. "

John Lithgow

Learning

Life

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

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

John Lithgow

Inside

Own

" When people are taking something extremely seriously, that's the time to take out the pig's bladder. "

" One of the problems in our lives is that people from different segments of our society just don't communicate with each other, nor do you ever see entertainment where they communicate with each other and fight with each other. "

" I am such a coward when it comes to political arguments. I tend to sort of recoil rather than engage. "

" Churchill faced his own diminishing capabilities and increasing irrelevance by maintaining the sense that he was the only one who could solve whatever problem was before him. He was very often wrong, of course, but then he had spent so much of his life overcoming appalling mistakes, disasters, and rejections. "

" My hairline is receding. So my days as a romantic lead - even though I've never had them - are behind me. "

" I'm too much of a Libra. I too often see the other person's point of view and capitulate, even though I have strong political convictions. It's just my liability. Maybe I'm too empathetic. That's the actor in me. "

John Lithgow

Strong

Political

" I like to rehearse and rehearse and have everything exactly calculated before we start shooting - probably to a fault. "

" In TV and movies, you get known for a certain thing, and that's what's expected. Onstage, people are more open to whatever character you create from one play to the next. "

" I have a lot of faith in people. "

" I never get tired of hearing compliments. "

" The Wodehouse language is so rich and detailed and hilarious. "

" I look on myself as a sort of hybrid, having grown up in the world of Shakespeare out in the cornfields of Ohio. "

John Lithgow

Look

Out

" The Broadway audience is made up of a greater percentage of tourists now. There's not nearly as much variety and danger and challenge in what's being offered. "

John Lithgow

Audience

Challenge

" I loved playing Roberta Muldoon! "

" The first long chapter of my career was almost entirely theater so that, by the time I was 30, 35, I sort of knew who I was as an actor, and I was gradually learning who I was as a human being. "

" An artist is always thinking of something else. My father was like that. He had this feeling of abstraction, and I do, too. "

John Lithgow

Father

Feeling

" 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. "

" It's pretty rare that I see a film that I did a long, long time ago. "

" We're in the business of using real emotions to bring pretend emotions to life. "

" 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. "

" The zombie is the new, sort of, archetype of our times. "

" I've said no to a lot of things I'd like to have done. My agent has never seen anything like it. "

John Lithgow

Things

Done

" We all have our secrets, and we all have our deceptions. Acting, at its best, is all about deceiving people, and this makes it all the more interesting to us. "

John Lithgow

Acting

Best