A Quote by John Lithgow
I look on myself as a sort of hybrid, having grown up in the world of Shakespeare out in the cornfields of Ohio.
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I think, having grown up with the Internet, things like trolls and the world of having an online life as well as a physical one, it's something I've grown up with.
Sometimes I long for a convent cell, with the sublime wisdom of centuries set out on bookshelves all along the wall and a view across the cornfields--there must be cornfields and they must wave in the breeze--and there I would immerse myself in the wisdom of the ages and in myself. Then I might perhaps find peace and clarity. But that would be no great feat. It is right here, in this very place, in the here and the now, that I must find them.
I have grown to appreciate the power of believing in myself and of always having faith in myself. I rarely look back; instead, I always look forward. There is so much of life that we miss when we wallow in regret.
I grew up in a theater family. My father was a regional theater classical repertory producer. He created Shakespeare festivals. He produced all of Shakespeare's plays, mostly in Shakespeare festivals in Ohio. One of them, the Great Lakes Theater Festival in Cleveland, is still going. So I grew up not wanting to be an actor, not wanting to go into the family business.
I never fully got to experience my childhood. I've spent a lot of time having to sort of grow myself up in many ways and also to sort of slow myself down and allow myself to live at the pace that I am.
Having grown up as a young Army officer in the Vietnam era, I had an instinctual sort of notion that you have to look very carefully and weigh very carefully what anyone says.
Having grown up in the theater family, having done a huge amount of acting from a very little boy to precocious teenager in Shakespeare festivals that my father produced, I went off to college and fell in with the theater gang. I was already an experienced actor. I became a kind of campus star. I heard all this applause and laughter.
Having grown up quite shy and quiet, it's important that I mark out who I am in the world through my work.
I always wanted to say I came out of the cornfields and got to the major leagues. That was my biggest thought. But now I can say I came out of the cornfields and got to the Hall of Fame.
One of the reasons [William] Shakespeare is so endlessly fascinating is that you can look at that figure from about 10 different angles: Caliban in Shakespeare's day was probably viewed as a sort of comic, barbarian type, but into the 19th century there were productions where Caliban was the hero. He's a potential rapist of a minor. Is that a good thing? No, it is not. On the other hand, Prospero's got him cooped up in a cave and tortures him if he doesn't do what Prospero wants. Is that a good thing? No. Shakespeare doesn't let you off easy.
I stepped away to find out more about myself, which I was having difficulty doing as a football player. I got a chance to travel the world. I studied Eastern philosophy, and I've grown as a person so much.
When I find myself having to share a meal with someone who simply wants to complain about the world, I almost feel myself wanting to crawl out of my skin and just sort of scurry away. But being able to pick up on that stuff and being able to easily identify the people walking towards the light instead of walking towards the darkness, that's a skill I'm very, very glad to see growing in myself.
There is a residual sense for me, having grown up in the early '70s, that I did not know I had, which was a sense that the military are different than I. Because there was such a divide between the military world - and there still is, because there's no draft - and the civilian world is one of the rotten harvests of the Vietnam War, was this sort of bifurcation of America in that way.
I always ended up having the funny part in Shakespeare, but I really thought I'd be doing theater. That was my ambition for myself.
It's easier to do Shakespeare than Spelling, and I know that sounds crazy, because the challenge of Shakespeare is living up to Shakespeare, living up to that word, not failing, you know, where with Aaron Spelling it's like, just try to look good. Or maybe don't use Spelling there, that's bad. No - you can. He's dead.
I think it's just having grown up around all that, it inspires you to excel in the sport that maybe your parents did. We grew up all around the water, and that sort of set our direction.
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