Before becoming Dr. Dick Solomon and brother to Sally Solomon on &#39;3rd Rock From The Sun,&#39; John Lithgow graduated from Harvard and began his acting career on Broadway.  &#39;3rd Rock From The Sun&#39; ran between 1996 and 2001 and when the show ended, Lithgow was cast in the film &#39;Orange County,&#39; which stars Jack Black and Colin Hanks. Lithgow continued on with his acting career, appearing in television movies such as &#39;My Life, Inc.&#39; and &#39;Einstein&#39;s Big Idea&#39; and films such as &#39;Dreamgirls,&#39; &#39;Confessions of a Shopaholic,&#39; &#39;Shrek and &#39;Leap Year.&#39;  Lithgow also landed recurring roles on shows such as &#39;Twenty Good Years&#39; from 2006 to 2008 and in 2010, he won an Emmy for playing serial killer Arthur Mitchell on the Showtime series &#39;Dexter&#39;.  In 2011, Lithgow appeared on the hit-TV comedy &#39;How I Met Your Mother&#39; as the father of Barney Stinson, who is played by Neil Patrick Harris. He also appears in a prequel to the hit &#39;Planet of the Apes&#39; film franchise - &#39;Rise of the Planet of the Apes,&#39; which stars James Franco. Over the years, Lithgow has earned multiple Tony and Emmy Awards, as well as two Academy Award nominations for his roles in the 1980s films &#39;The World According to Garp&#39; and &#39;Terms of Endearment.&#39; He has also recorded music and written poetry and short stories for children. Lithgow also delivers many commencement addresses and has shot ads for Campbell&#39;s Soup. Lithgow has been married twice and has a son and a daughter. &#40;Pictured: John Lithgow appears in a scene from the TV show, &#39;3rd Rock from the Sun.&#39; &#47; John Lithgow appears in a scene from the TV show, &#39;How I Met Your Mother&#39; in 2011.&#41; <span class=meta>(Carsey-Werner Company&#47;20th Century Fox Television)</span>
{"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS4 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2011:03:30 11:56:47", "Image ExifOffset": "164", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "302", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "7943", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "531", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "377"}