John Lithgow opened up about playing Dumbledore in the upcoming “Harry Potter” series when speaking at Rotterdam Film Festival, where “Jimpa,” his latest film, screened Sunday.
Asked about J.K. Rowling trans statements, he said: “I take the subject extremely seriously. She has created this amazing canon for young people and it has jumped into the consciousness of the society. It’s about good versus evil, kindness versus cruelty. I find her views ironic and inexplicable. I’ve never met her, she’s not really involved in this production at all. But the people who are, are remarkable.”
He added: “It upsets me when people are opposed to me having anything to do with this. But in ‘Potter’ canon you see no trace of transphobic sensitivity. She’s written this mediation of kindess and acceptance. And Dumbledore is a beautiful role.”
“It was a hard decision. It made me uncomfortable and unhappy that people insisted I walk away from the job. I chose not to do that.”
He joked: “I’m the oldest person in this entire room, just turned 80. And yet I signed a contract – I will be playing Dumbledore for the next eight years! I absolutely have to keep at it. I felt: ‘Wow! That means I will live to be 88.’ I have that in writing.”
Still, one audience member still expressed their disappointment over his decision. “Things like these don’t help,” they said, leaving the room in protest and starting a heated discussion that overshadowed a meeting about Lithgow’s Rotterdam premiere ‘Jimpa.”
“I’m perfectly ready for collisions of opinion. I understand it,” said Lithgow.
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In “Jimpa,” he acts alongside Olivia Colman.
“Olivia has such access to her own emotional life, it’s so genuine. It’s so real to her. She keeps you on the same emotional wavelength. What an amazing actor,” he said.
Directed by Sophie Hyde, it sees Hannah (Colman) reunite with her father (Lithgow), who came out later in life. Now, he lives in Amsterdam.
“They’re the most welcoming people in the world,” Lithgow said of his experience working with the Dutch crew. “The whole experience was like one big party. I was one percent of the straight crew and had a magnificent time.”
He also praised Hyde. “Her story, her artistic and emotional instincts… I don’t know if I was her first choice to play her father, but that’s what she told me.” Her references included his turn in “Love Is Strange.”
Hyde – also behind “Good Luck to You, Leo Grande” – explained that the film was inspired by her own story.
“My dad was a very eccentric gay man who came out just after I was born. When I was a teenager, he told me he was HIV positive. It was a time of crisis and I thought he was going to die too, but then the drugs came in and people started to survive, and my dad survived. When I had my child, he was there too.”
He died when her child, Aud Mason-Hyde, also debuting in the film, was just 12 years old.
“Later they came out as trans and non-binary, and they were very public about it. And I wished for them both to be in the same room. That impulse was the beginning of that film,” said the director.
Asked about his heroes, Lithgow said: “I grew up in a theater family, and among actors. Many of them were my absolute heroes. My father was a hero of mine, but these actors in a small town in Ohio, acting in Shakespeare plays in the summer time, they were such passionate people. Many of them gay, by the way. I was just a little boy, idolizing these gay men. It informed me playing Jim.”
“Sophie shared so much of her own history; she was giving me letters he’d written, quotes. She’s a sneaky director. She’s constantly slipping you little bits and pieces.”
He talked about the “remarkable” rehearsal period and the secret assignments she would give the actors.
“She was turning us into a real family.”
“In that week, we didn’t read a single line or play a single scene. But after there was no anxiety and first day jitters, not thinking: ‘What will these Australians think of my accent?!’ That was gone.”
“Oh fuck yeah. It was one big love affair,” said actor Hans Kesting. “John was so enthusiastic and there was so much love from the very beginning.”
“It was putting brown paper on the floor and having John outline my body, and all the scars. Later, that connection is there. This was about getting to know each other, and listening to each other’s stories – also about childhood.” The film touched him “to the core.”
“Because of the way Sophie told her story, the relationship between the characters. These are such terrible times so you long for heart, laugh, love, togetherness. It’s all in this movie.”
Another cast member, Zoë Love Smith, added: “My big international role and to play with John and Olivia? There was this immediate warmth. I wanted this role not just because it was big, but because it felt so good. I didn’t have rehearsals like that ever in my life.”
Romana Vrede, who also joining the team on stage, called the film “powerful and personal,” also because of its real-life roots. “It just flows and that’s what life is. I loved that it captured life.”
Talking about acting, Lithgow added: “Styles change, but the basics of storytelling are very much the same. Any actor’s Holy Grail is the suspension of disbelief, making the audience believe that it’s not fiction but it’s real. Forgetting that these are actors. You never achieve it because adults at least know they are watch actors pretend.”
“I used to have a second career entertaining children, and I used to absolutely love it. With them, they haven’t gotten there yet. They think they are seeing the real thing! I would sing my song with a silly hat on, pretend I forgot to take it off, and they would yell: ‘Take your hat off!’ So wonderful. That’s what you seek with audiences too, even for a fleeting moment. And that never changes.”
He said: “I’ve had a long career and there has only been five or six [films] that were everything I’d hoped for. In this hothouse moment, when there’s such cruelty and misuse of power over people, it’s wonderful to make a film about empathy and kindness. Jimpa [the character] can be unwillingly cruel, but he’s always trying.”
“The most interesting acting I’ve done was lying in a coma next to Olivia Colman. You can see a tear running down my cheek, which revealed that he heard and understood what she was saying. It was so crucial to creating the reality of the scene,” he recalled.
“I guess I was just terribly moved by the thought of my own death.”
From Variety US