But later, once his career had branched into film—winning him Oscar nominations for The World According to Garp and Terms of Endearment and appearances in Footloose and The Pelican Brief—he says he was glad to claim his college roots.

“Once I was doing well as an actor, I became very proud of my Harvard background,” Lithgow says.

His return to Cambridge as an overseer in 1989 may have helped Lithgow to turn his career in new directions.

“It was such a creative rush having an idea and getting it executed,” he says of bringing the Arts First festival to life.

Lithgow has taken other creative risks in recent years, venturing away from the world of film.

He’s probably best known these days for his work in television, starring in NBC’s series Third Rock from the Sun. He won three Emmys for playing Dick Solomon, the high commander of a group of alien explorers, posing as a physics professor.

Lithgow’s character stumbles through the trials of social life, puzzling over his “feelings” for other humans, experimenting with cigarettes and attempting to join an “ethnic group.”

But once the show was over, Lithgow says he wanted to try something completely new.

He went back to Broadway for the first time in decades, playing a manipulative gossip columnist in the 2002 Broadway musical Sweet Smell of Success, based on a 1957 film of the same title.

He won a Tony Award for his performance, although the show closed within three months.

But perhaps his boldest move is soon to come.

When choreographer Christopher Wheeldon, who worked with Lithgow on Sweet Smell of Success, asked him to write the words for a children’s ballet, he agreed.

Lithgow had already made forays into children’s entertainment, writing and performing a collection of songs, and even publishing children’s books.

Then Wheeldon asked him to play a small role.

Lithgow agreed—and next month, he’ll dance with the New York City Ballet in the Carnival of the Animals, playing a female elephant.