The iconic horror movie John Lithgow refused to star in: “I found it such an icky story”
Just because John Lithgow has been pictured recently in flowing robes and a wispy white beard as Dumbledore for the first time as he prepares to step into the hallowed wizard’s pointy shoes on the forthcoming HBO Harry Potter series, doesn’t mean that he’ll take on any role that’s thrown his way.
While Lithgow has made a storied career playing almost every kind of character imaginable, on stage and on screens both small and big, he still draws the line at body horror, as we’ll come to shortly. It’s quite remarkable just how successful he has been for so long when you look at it. He was winning Tony awards as far back as 1973, becoming one of the more famous faces on Broadway and acting alongside the likes of Meryl Streep.
He then starred in Bob Fossey’s legendary musical movie All that Jazz with Roy Scheider before going into television in the early 1980s, starring in shows like a Twilight Zone remake he later described as his favourite of his whole career. In the mid-’80s he went back to movies, taking roles in films like Santa Claus: The Movie and 1986’s Manhattan Project.
But that same year he made a decision that would prove pivotal not so much for Lithgow but certainly for a certain Jeff Goldblum. As he told IN magazine, “My agent wanted me to do The Fly and I didn’t want to do it. I just finished another project and I was exhausted, and I found it such an icky story”.
Icky is certainly one word for the cult David Cronenberg creature feature that saw a mad scientist step into a machine only to be mashed together with a winged insect with predictably gross results. The special effects were quite something to behold, however, as was Goldblum’s performance in the lead role, and the film was a big success, quadrupling its budget at the box office.
Lithgow says he didn’t take the part “out of respect for my good friend Jeff Goldblum” and that “I told my agent I just didn’t want to play something so grotesque”. He wasn’t alone; the prosthetics involved and general subject matter of the film proved too much for John Malkovich, too, while Cronenberg vetoed Pierce Brosnan, and Goldblum eventually got the nod because he was willing to sit for hours upon hours in the make-up chair.
While the film won an Oscar for its effects and launched Goldblum’s career, Lithgow certainly didn’t suffer for having passed it up. He won an Emmy for TV work that same year and throughout the ‘90s worked with some of the industry’s leading names on movies like A Pelican Brief and Cliffhanger, as well as scooping multiple awards for TV comedy 3rd Rock From the Sun.
Over the next 20 years or so, Lithgow also became known for his voice-over work, lending his dulcet tones to the likes of Lord Farquaad in Shrek and then winning a Golden Globe for his guest spot on serial killer show Dexter.
In the last decade, he has won considerable acclaim for his portrayal of Winston Churchill on Netflix’s The Crown and appeared in Martin Scorsese’s Killers of a Flower Moon with Leonardo DiCaprio, and also starred with Ralph Fiennes in last year’s papal drama The Conclave, steering aeons away from body horror.
