Lithgow talked about the process on Seth Rudetsky's Chatterbox about 15 years ago. As I recall, he said he was sent the script, but didn't read it right away because he was shooting a movie (he didn't say which one) and didn't want to be distracted from the character he was playing. On the last night of shooting, a Thursday, he had to stay up all night shooting on location, so he brought the M. Butterfly script with him to read during his down time - and couldn't believe how good it was. He went home, slept most of the day, then late on Friday afternoon called the New York agency that was handling it, but he was in California, and because of the time difference they had already closed for the weekend. When he finally tracked someone down over the weekend, they told him that because he hadn't responded promptly, they assumed he wasn't interested and had given the part to Ed Harris. "No! He's completely wrong for it" Lithgow said.
But eventually it worked out for him. |
