John Lithgow on the Role That Almost Killed Him & the 'Sparkly Brilliance' of Edward Albee's A Delicate Balance

Playing King Lear in Central Park would be enough career excitement for most actors on the cusp of their 69th birthday, but it was only the start of an action-packed season for John Lithgow. The two-time Tony winner jumped from Lear to Edward Albee’s uber-WASP Tobias opposite Glenn Close in the current Broadway revival of A Delicate Balance and is featured in three well-reviewed movies: a touching star turn as Alfred Molina’s husband in Love Is Strange and smaller roles as Matthew McConaughey’s father-in-law in Interstellar and a frontier preacher in The Homesman, directed by and starring his college pal Tommy Lee Jones. The down-to-earth Lithgow reflected on his busy schedule in a recent chat with Broadway.com.

Two big plays, three cool movies: How does it feel to be in demand?
I live in constant fear that people will get sick and tired of me because I’m actually growing sick and tired of myself [laughs]. Seniority is a great thing in the acting profession. It’s not quite so kind to women, but you age into wonderful roles at the same time other people drop out of the business.

Were you able to rest after King Lear before starting A Delicate Balance?
I only had three weeks in between. It’s crazy to do two such huge roles in succession, but these are offers you can’t refuse.

Obviously, you’re the opposite of Tobias. You aren’t sitting around mixing martinis and going to the club.
Right. I felt restless in rehearsal because I’m accustomed to being a far more active participant. Albee himself described Tobias as “a retired man” in every sense of the word. My own feeling is that his life is shot through with regret and melancholy. He’s watchful and reactive, and then he’s forced to be proactive when all these crises descend upon him and Agnes [Glenn Close]. He has a lot in common with George in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, a part I have also played…

…Directed by Edward Albee! What was that like?
It was a period when he had grown frustrated with directors messing around with his plays, and he insisted on directing them himself. Glenda Jackson and I did it in Los Angeles [in 1989], and Edward… as a director, he’s a brilliant playwright [laughs]. I’ll say no more. Thank goodness he found some marvelous interpreters, like Pam MacKinnon. She treats his plays as sacred texts.

A Delicate Balance [which debuted in 1966] has aged so well, but it seems like a deceptively tricky play to perform.
Extremely tricky. First of all, you have to acquaint people with this isolated and arcane world. I went to Harvard, and a lot of my classmates were the children of Tobias and Agnes—America’s patrician class of the New England variety. Edward insisted that we update [the revival] to the present day, but you don’t have any sense of that. These people don’t change much. The trick of Albee is that his writing is so elusive. The dialogue has a kind of sparkly brilliance and yet it’s a veneer. As a playwright, he’s a great puzzle master. The characters keep the audience guessing, and Edward takes a devilish pleasure in that.

Can you believe more than 30 years have passed since you and Glenn Close got Oscar nods for The World According to Garp? [Close played Garp’s mom, Jenny Fields; Lithgow was transsexual ex-football player Roberta Muldoon.]
And she is completely unchanged! I’ve changed back into a male, of course. It’s wonderful to have that history, because Agnes and Tobias have a long, long history. I also worked with Bob Balaban in 1985 [in the film 2010] and we’re now playing men with a friendship of 40 years. Everybody in this cast has been on the same page from the get-go, and we all like each other enormously.

King Lear was your first American production of Shakespeare in more than 40 years. Did it live up your expectations?
It outstripped them. I loved the role, and Central Park was the perfect atmosphere for the play. We only did it 24 times, but if we’d done it 25, it would have killed me.

What’s the key to performing these huge roles with such stamina?
I don’t know. It’s the only thing I can do right anymore! [Laughs.]. When I did King Lear, I conserved all my energy for those three hours every night. I didn’t talk to anybody. I didn’t work out. And I learned the entire role before the first day of rehearsal, which I have never done. I knew that those four weeks were going to be about building my stamina for it. By the time I was performing it start to finish, I knew exactly where I was going to take every breath.

Let’s talk about your trio of movies.
They are terrific in different ways. In the case of [The Homesman], Tommy Lee Jones, who is an old friend, called, and I said, “Of course! I’ll do anything you want.” Love Is Strange is the best role I’ve ever had a movie. Alfred Molina, a wonderful man and a great acting partner, had already been cast, so I knew it was going to work like a dream. Amazingly enough, I thought I had to make a choice between Love Is Strange and Interstellar, a big part in a little movie or a little part in a big Chris Nolan movie. I was going to pick Love Is Strange, but my agent pulled off a miracle and I was able to do both.

How does Broadway today compare to the '70s, when you got started?
Broadway has become a sort of theme park with well-known actors in almost every project, which is safer economically but more challenging artistically. A Delicate Balance is one of the rare shows where Scott Rudin put together a high-powered cast who are right for their roles. Back in the '70s, Broadway, like New York, was in terrible shape. Only half the theaters were full, but when I debuted in The Changing Room, across the street was That Championship Season, down the street was Pippin and down Shubert Alley was A Little Night Music. These were extraordinary, daring new works, none of which featured a movie star.

Do you any more theatrical mountains to climb? Maybe another musical?
I have no idea. Other people think more creatively about me than I think about myself. All my best work has been work I never dreamed I could do until people pushed me into it. So hopefully they’ll keep thinking.

See John Lithgow in A Delicate Balance at the Golden Theatre.