A friend spurred Lithgow’s thundering heroics

If you move into a new place, a good friend will give you a floral arrangement or a fruit plate.
A great one will give you a horse.
The latter describes Rex Linn. “I bought some land in Montana,” John Lithgow said. “He told me, ‘You can’t own that land and not have a horse.”
The result is reflected 30 years later, when “The Old Man” starts its second season, at 10 p.m. Sept. 12 on FX. There is Lithgow (shown here, left, with Jeff Bridges) – not usually an action hero – riding a horse and wielding a rifle. “It’s perfect heaven,” he said.
And that seems to delight the guy who got him started riding. “He’s been one of my best friends forever,” Linn said.
These two seem as opposite as a rodeo and a Broadway musical.
Linn is a Texas native who grew up in Oklahoma. His dad liked horses; so does his love interest, Reba McEntire.
Lithgow went to high school in Princeton, to college in Harvard, to grad school in London and on to Broadway. He’s had six Tony nominations, winning twice; he has a gentle, artful image.
These friends seem to have nothing in common – except size. Each is 6-foot-4, with a lion-esque pate; they met in the 1993 “Cliffhanger,” playing the psychotic villains who captured Sylvester Stallone.
Afterward, Lithgow bought the Montana land and Linn gave him the horse. “It was pretty tame,” he said. “John named him Thunder.”
The name was aspirational. “I’ve been plodding through the woods at a slow pace all these years,” Lithgow said, “fantasizing about thundering across the set with cameras rolling. And by God, it happened.”
Not quickly. Late in 2019, “Old Man” filming started with Bridges as a former CIA agent and Lithgow as his former handler, assigned to capture him. Production was stalled for Covid … then for Bridges’ cancer treatments … then for the actors’ and writers’ strikes.
That first season drew raves from critics, an Emmy nomination for Bridges and Golden Globe nominations for both men. Now – 26 months after the first season ended – the second arrives.
Now Bridges and Lithgow are reluctant allies in Afghanistan, trying to save the woman each considers his daughter. In the opener, Bridges, 74, has fierce fights; Lithgow, 78, thunders in (well rides in) on horseback, with a rifle.
His friend Linn is sort of the true cowboy. “My dad was a lawyer,” he said, “but he had a ranch. I spent a lot of time there.”
Lithgow has done Broadway shows; Linn has done one show (“Fiddler on the Roof,” in high school), but was promptly dropped after he busted up the scenery. “My adrenaline got the better of me.”
He became a banker and, at 34, loaded up a car and moved to Los Angeles.
He’s been busy there, from “Cliffhanger” to nine seasons of “CSI: Miami” to 27 episodes scattered over the run of “Young Sheldon.” He played the principal, the guy who fired George (Sheldon’s dad), hired him again, later had to tell George’s wife that he had died.
At the same time, Linn has been working with McEntire, in “The Hammer” and “Big Sky” and (starting Oct. 18), the new NBC comedy “Happy’s Place.”
That’s one route to casting, he joked. “I’ll just wait around. I’ll listen to her on the phone. When she agrees to play a role, I’m looking at her.”
McEntire is also a skilled rider who trained as a rodeo barrel racer. Maybe someday she’ll thunder through Afghanistan with Lithgow.