John Lithgow couldn’t wait to strip down for his newest position in “Jimpa.”
When the 79-year-old actor discovered he’d should take off his garments within the 2025 drama that premiered Thursday on the Sundance Movie Competition, he couldn’t wait, in accordance with the flick’s director, Sophie Hyde.
“John was so amped to do everything that was required, in terms of fulfilling this character and making the film,” Hyde advised Leisure Weekly on the competition in an article revealed Friday. “He was so excited by the idea of Jim, who he was, and the idea that he would get naked all the time. That was part of what appealed to John.”
“He was like, ‘I feel like it’s fantastic that he would be naked in the first few minutes of the film, and then it’s like whatever. Who cares? We now know who the character is.’”
It was “not difficult at all” to get Lithgow to strip for the position, the “Good Luck to You, Leo Grande” director continued, including that the star embraced the concept from the onset of their work collectively.
“John just comes at character with this huge gusto. He’s so excited, so rich and deep in his exploration, and part of that was being naked,” Hyde mentioned of her first dialog with Lithgow.
As for whether or not prosthetics had been used within the movie, Hyde performed coy.
“All I will say is that John is the most open, generous person, with his body and his heart and his soul, when it comes to making a story and a character,” she teased. “So that moment he just walks on in, he just drops it in front of whoever’s there — closed set, of course — and he just goes for it. He is absolutely wonderful.”
Starring alongside Oscar winner Olivia Colman and Aud Mason-Hyde, Lithgow performs a titular character in “Jimpa,” a father and grandfather who left his household behind in Australia years in the past to maneuver to Amsterdam and stay as an overtly homosexual man and activist.
The movie follows Jimpa’s ex, Hannah (Colman), and their trans non-binary teenage little one, Frances (Mason-Hyde), as they journey to Amsterdam in an try and try to reconnect with him.
The Put up’s film critic Johnny Oleksinski gave “Jimpa” two stars, calling it a “sappy film that tries too hard.”
Oleksinski defined, “The overlong and too-steady movie tries to say so much — about the struggles of being gay in the ‘80s, gender identity, nontraditional relationship structures — that it all comes off as white noise. Albeit white noise that has a borderline oppressive desire to make us cry.”
He added, “’Jimpa’ has got a heart, no doubt about it. But that struggling ticker could use a pacemaker. ”
