Bankrate: Was there any one role you had in your career that changed your life more than any other?
John Lithgow: I guess there were three life-changing roles because each of them was a debut of sorts. My Broadway debut in "The Changing Room" in 1973 was my first job on Broadway, and three weeks after opening night, I got my first Tony Award, which got me started as a working actor. The second big breakthrough role was Roberta Muldoon in "The World According to Garp." That was my breakthrough role in films. And then, of course, there was Dick Solomon in "3rd Rock from the Sun," which took everybody by surprise, myself included. Starring in a hit TV series is a different kind of success altogether. You become such common knowledge.
Bankrate: So is "3rd Rock" the role people most stop you on the street for?
John Lithgow: Oh yes, I think so. When people say, "Aren't you that guy?" they're usually talking about "3rd Rock from the Sun."
Bankrate: What was it before that?
John Lithgow: There are so many. The thing is, I've worked in so many different veins that people recognize me for different things. I get recognized all the time for "Ricochet," "Footloose," "Garp," "Terms of Endearment," "Buckaroo Banzai." And then you walk through the streets of New York, and every fifth person you meet has just seen you the night before in "All My Sons."
Bankrate: How do you manage to balance all the things you do?
John Lithgow: It's just going from one thing to another, really. I only do things when I have time for them. The most important thing in my life is my marriage and my family. That's at the very heart of things. I guess that's how I balance it. I've always believed that for an actor, it's vitally important to have other things in your life that are far more important than acting.
Bankrate: So what do you do for fun to get away from acting?
John Lithgow: My wife is from Montana, and we have a little cabin on a lake there, and we disappear there -- at least in the summers and oftentimes during the year. That's an extraordinary retreat. We ride horses, ski in the winter, swim in the summer, play tennis and golf. It's all the stuff I never gave myself -- gifts I never gave myself as a young man. I also paint. Actually, when I started out, late into my teens, I was far more interested in being a painter than an actor, and I maintain that as a hobby. When I'm in LA, I rent a painting studio and disappear there for hours and oil paint.
Bankrate: Do you treat yourself to any great extravagances?
John Lithgow: My biggest extravagance was finally getting myself a beautiful apartment in New York. I've lived in Los Angeles since the '80s -- my wife is a UCLA professor there -- and I've come back many, many times to do jobs in New York. But I was always scaring up a sublet somewhere or staying in an apartment hotel. I have finally given myself the luxury gift of a home in New York, and boy, does that make life in New York wonderful.
Bankrate: With everything going on in the economy, do you find yourself scaling back?
John Lithgow: It's all hitting us very quickly, isn't it? I'm just beginning a job that's going to take me several months through the theater season. I feel lucky to be employed at the moment, and I just have to hope and trust that people will always need to be entertained, maybe in these terrible days more than ever. They'll always need actors. You'd think we were dispensable, but we're not.