Lifestyle
John Lithgow on having a “good ending” — on and off screen
John Lithgow at the 74th Annual Tony Awards in 2021.
Angela Weiss/AFP
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Angela Weiss/AFP
A note from Wild Card host Rachel Martin: Who is your John Lithgow? We had a staff meeting recently where we all went around and named the character who made us love John Lithgow and the choices were as varied as his career.
Mine is Reverend Shaw Moore, the pastor from the movie Footloose, who banned dancing in his small Texas town and, in doing so, gave Kevin Bacon one of the best “I’m-so-mad-I-need-to-do-gymnastics!” scenes of all time.
Our producer said her John Lithgow is from the 1983 Twilight Zone movie. Our editor said his Lithgow has to be Dick Solomon, the patriarch of the alien family in the massively popular TV show 3rd Rock from the Sun.
John Lithgow seems to have done all the things: theatre, movies, TV. Good guys, bad guys… lots of bad guys. Or just maybe complicated characters, including Winston Churchill in The Crown and a very small king in Shrek. This is an actor who is willing to take a risk, play against type, and elevate the profound and the ridiculous.
John Lithgow breaks down his most iconic characters.
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And it must be said the man loves to work. Just in the last few years, he’s been in the Hulu series, The Old Man, a play about the writer Roald Dahl, the movie Conclave that came out earlier this year, as well as the new animated film Spellbound.
This Wild Card interview has been edited for length and clarity. Host Rachel Martin asks guests randomly-selected questions from a deck of cards. Tap play above to listen to the full podcast, or read an excerpt below.
Question 1: What was a moment in your life when you could have chosen a different path?
John Lithgow: Oh, my entire childhood I had chosen a different path. I grew up in a theater family but did not want to be an actor. I didn’t even consider it because right up until I was about 17 years old, I fully intended to be a painter. I was quite committed to it [for] as long as I can remember. You know, if I were ever asked any version of what you want to be when you grow up — it was always an artist. And I had great encouragement from my parents.
Rachel Martin: So, they were not steering you in the direction of the theater?
Lithgow: Not at all. They weren’t discouraging me. Although I do remember when I told my dad that I was auditioning for a Fulbright to study acting in earnest in London, his face fell, like, “Oh, my God, no.” And I said, “Dad, you’ve produced all these Shakespeare festivals, you’ve even hired me to act. What did you expect me to want to do?” And he said, “Well, I always thought that it would be a good idea for you to go to business school.” And I said “What?”
Martin: Oh, interesting. So it’s not like he held up your artistic dreams. He wasn’t like, “Oh, I really thought you were going to be a painter…”
Lithgow: Yeah. And I said, “What are you thinking? I would never go to business school.” He said, “Well, as a theater manager, I’ve always felt that my great failing was in the area of business.”
Martin: I mean, we all as parents do that to some degree, I imagine, even though I try not to, my kids are sort of young, but, you know, project your own, “I’ve learned the hard way. You know, the theater is tough!” So, you know, he struggled in the trenches and maybe he wanted something different for you.
Lithgow: He struggled terribly. It was a very tough life for him. And I think he just felt the need to spare me.
Martin: Right. And I bet your dad was proud of you in the end.
Lithgow: Oh, ultimately, yes, of course. It’s worked out just fine.
John Lithgow played Dick Solomon, the patriarch of the alien family, in the massively popular TV show 3rd Rock from the Sun. He’s shown here with guest star David Hasselhoff.
Photo by NBC/Hulton Archive
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Photo by NBC/Hulton Archive
Question 2: What period of your life do you often daydream about?
Lithgow: I think it’s my early years in New York theater – the 1970s. I would say in any given year, in the 1970s in New York, I probably was acting on stage or on Broadway on about 300 of the 365 nights. I mean, I just went from one theater job to another.
Martin: It sounds exhausting…
Lithgow: Oh it was just – I was young! I got everywhere on a bicycle. I acted. God, I did a show in 1975 at Lincoln Center, Trelawny of the “Wells.” Among the cast were Mary Beth Hurt, Sasha von Scherler, and Mandy Patinkin in his first role – and, in her first job out of Yale Drama School, Meryl Streep. We were all thick as thieves and we would have big potluck suppers together.
Martin: That’s worthy of daydreaming, yeah. Things felt limitless for you then?
Lithgow: Yeah. Even though it was really tough and the town was dirty and dangerous and depressing in every way — except if you were a young actor, it was just electric.
Martin: Does that in any way mean that theater is still where you feel most at home?
Lithgow: In a sense. I mean I like everything I do as long as I’m employed. But the theater is where you feel like you’re using absolutely everything you’ve got and you’re in charge of the story.
John Lithgow portrays British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in Netflix’s “The Crown.”
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Question 3: Do you think there’s more to reality than we can see or touch?
Lithgow: I have a pretty simple version of reality. You’re immediately making me look around me like what’s real and what isn’t. And everything I see is real.
I think of death as death. I don’t think there’s life after death or a soul after death. I had an extraordinary death experience, two years ago. I directed that wonderful New Yorker, Doug McGrath, in his one-man show that he had written for himself. He had a wonderful little off-Broadway success with it and it was in his third week of a run. He was going to do it as long as he wanted in a tiny theater downtown. And he didn’t show up at the theater one night because in his office, by himself, at about four in the afternoon, he’d lain down, had a heart attack, and died — at age 64.
And it was such a traumatic thing to experience. He died painlessly and almost courteously. He didn’t make anybody else suffer over his death except over the fact that it had happened like that [snaps].
Martin: And did that change anything for you and how you think of it? The end-ness of it all?
Lithgow: I was startled at how soon I was able to absorb it as just having happened and the new reality. This lovely man who was quite a dear friend, having worked together so closely, he was simply gone. And I knew that he was gone. And the brain simply adjusts.
Martin: Did it make you any more or less comfortable with your own demise?
Lithgow: More. I just know it’s coming. And I think the best thing is to have a gracious ending. You know, I calculate my exit from any film or television or stage play, and I always want to have a good ending. Well, I want to have a good ending to my life too. That no one grieves over.
Martin: Well, people will grieve.
Lithgow: I can’t believe I’m talking about these things. I’ve had three cancers in my life. First in 1988, 2004, and then only a couple of years ago — in every case dealt with immediately and put an end to, you know. Melanomas that could be detected early and removed. A prostatectomy that eliminated prostate cancer from my life. But I’m almost glad that I had the shocking experience of being told, “You have a malignancy.” To have realistically contemplated, “Oh my God – this might really, I might die of this.” I think it was a useful experience to have in terms of just putting your whole life into perspective.
Students walk on the Stanford University campus on March 14, 2019, in Stanford, Calif.
Ben Margot/AP
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Ben Margot/AP
When Theo Baker arrived at Stanford University a few years ago, he joined the student newspaper, following the path of his journalist parents, Peter Baker, a White House correspondent for The New York Times, and Susan Glasser, a writer for The New Yorker.
Through his reporting as a student journalist, he eventually broke a story about manipulated data in Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne’s neuroscience research that helped lead to the university president’s resignation.
Theo Baker’s book, How to Rule the World: An Education in Power at Stanford University was released May 19. In it, Baker describes Stanford as a place where proximity to Silicon Valley gives rise to a parallel system of influence, recruitment and money, with investors looking to identify promising students almost as soon as they arrive on campus.
He told Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep there was “a sort of Stanford inside Stanford,” where elite students are drawn into an “alternate reality” of excess and access to cut corners.
In the interview, he discusses how Stanford is not just a university but also a pipeline where status and power can matter as much as ideas.
We reached out to Stanford University for comment and have not heard back.
Listen to the interview by clicking play on the blue box above.
The scoreboard shows the results of the women’s singles final match between Iga Swiatek of Poland and Amanda Anisimova of the U.S. at the Wimbledon Tennis Championships in London, Saturday, July 12, 2025.
Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP
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Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP
Fifteen points in tennis? Nice. Thirty, 40 — even better. Advantage — that sounds good. “Love” — that also must be great, right? Well, not quite.
As the French Open rolls on and Serena Williams has announced her return to the sport, maybe you’ve been paying a little more attention to tennis. The sport’s scoring system is notably distinct, and can sometimes be hard to grasp for newcomers. But even tennis aficionados might not know why, or how, “love” became the unmistakable callout for zero points. For this installment of NPR’s Word of the Week, we’re exploring how a word that signifies trailing behind got such a sweet name.
“Love” comes from the heart — or an egg?
It’s hard to pinpoint when the first tennis ball went over the net. Tennis is a derivative of lots of other sports, such as “jeu de paume,” a handball game played in France, said JT Buzanga, the collections manager at the International Tennis Hall of Fame museum.
But tennis became a patented, official sport in 1874, said Steve Flink, a journalist whose tennis coverage got him inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame. It has retained its unique, mysterious scoring system ever since.
“By and large, the original system has held up almost entirely,” Flink said.
The use of “love” goes back to the late 18th century, said Jesse Sheidlower, a lexicographer. But it was used earlier than that in card games such as whist and bridge. Before the term made its way to tennis, the sport favored plain old “nothing,” or “nil,” he said.
Why love in the first place, though? Historians don’t really know for sure, but there are a few theories.
The French could have something to do with it. Some historians believe “love” derives from “l’oeuf,” which means “the egg” in French. Because eggs are shaped like zeros, terms such as “goose egg” and “duck’s egg” have been used in other contexts to mean zero, Sheidlower said.
It’s also possible English speakers mispronounced l’oeuf as “love.” But Sheidlower isn’t convinced that’s the answer.
“It’s the French equivalent of an English expression. But since that expression doesn’t appear in French, the French word wouldn’t have been used,” he said.
To be sure, France has had a lot of influence on tennis culture, Buzanga said. For example, “deuce” or a game tied at 40 points, comes from the French word for “two”: “deux.” But he prefers another prominent theory: that “love” comes from the idiom “for the love of the game.” Even if a player hasn’t scored, it doesn’t matter, because their heart is in it. It’s the theory Sheidlower said is the most plausible, because the idiom was used by the English before tennis was popularized.
Another variation of the “love of the game” theory is that the word could have come from the Dutch “lof,” or “honor” — or the Latin “amare,” meaning “to love,” Flink said.
But if tennis’ “love” doesn’t come from a French word, the theory at least has a French sensibility.
“I think the ‘for the love of the game’ is kind of romantic,” Buzanga said.
“Love” probably isn’t going anywhere
Tennis used to be a sport of leisure. The style of play has changed a lot over the years; players are more athletic and competitive, for instance, Flink said. But the rules of the sport are more steadfast, he said.
“There’s this incredible, enduring respect for tradition in tennis,” he said. “Changes are not made easily.”
There has been one major change in modern history: the tie-break. Matches can go on and on because players have to score two consecutive points to break a deuce, or by two games to break a tied set. But the onset of television meant matches would have to get shorter if the sport wanted to capture a larger audience, Flink said.
Change even came for “love.” An alternative sprouted up in the 1970s, and is still used today: “bagel,” named for its zero shape, Sheidlower said. Novices may say “zero,” and insiders will understand what they mean, but they “will needle them about it,” Flink said.
But “love” still prevails.
“People kind of like it,” Flink said. “It’s different. Why say zero when you can say love?”
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