The World According to Garp **** (1982, Robin Williams, Mary Beth Hurt, Glenn Close, John Lithgow) – Classic Movie Review 7,658

George Roy Hill’s 1982 comedy drama film The World According to Garp brings John Irving’s novel to the screen with its clever quirkiness and humour intact. Robin Williams, Mary Beth Hurt, Glenn Close and John Lithgow star.

Director George Roy Hill’s 1982 comedy drama film The World According to Garp brings John Irving’s 1978 novel to the screen with its clever quirkiness and humour intact thanks to writer Steve Tesich’s intelligent adaptation and director Hill’s sensitive handling of an offbeat subject. It was nominated for two Oscars: John Lithgow and Glenn Close were nominated for Best Actor in a Supporting Role and Best Actress in a Supporting Role at the 55th Academy Awards.

Robin Williams plays T S Garp, a sweet-natured writer whose life is shaped by the actions of his strong-willed mother Jenny (Glenn Close, Oscar nominated in her film début) and the bizarre events that dog his every step.

The World According to Garp offers high-calibre acting in difficult roles, with John Lithgow (another Oscar nominee) a standout as an ex-pro footballer who undergoes a sex change and become Roberta Muldoon.

Despite its faults, The World According to Garp is a tender, funny, sad and tolerant movie.

Also in the cast are Mary Beth Hurt as Helen Holm, Hume Cronyn, Jessica Tandy, Swoosie Kurtz, Amanda Plummer, James McCall, Peter Michael Goetz, George Ede, Mark Soper, Nathan Babcock, Ian MacGregor, Warren Berlinger, Susan Browning, Jenny Wright, Jillian Ross and Laurie Robyn.

Glenn Close (born March 19, 1947) plays Robin Williams’s mother though she is only four years older. 

It is the first of Glenn Close’s eight Oscar nominations for: The World According to Garp (1982), The Big Chill (1983), The Natural (1984), Fatal Attraction (1987), Dangerous Liaisons (1988), Albert Nobbs (2011), Hillbilly Elegy (2020), The Wife (2018). 

Glenn Close has won three Primetime Emmy Awards, three Tony Awards and three Golden Globe Awards.

John  Lithgow made his film debut in Dealing: Or the Berkeley-to-Boston Forty-Brick Lost-Bag Blues in 1972, and in 1976, he starred in Brian De Palma’s Obsession. 

Lithgow has won two Tony Awards, seven Emmy Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, three Screen Actors Guild Awards, an American Comedy Award, a Laurence Olivier Award, and four Drama Desk Awards, and he has been nominated for two Academy Awards.

Mary Beth Hurt (September 26, 1946 – March 28, 2026)

Mary Beth Hurt was born Mary Beth Supinger in Marshalltown, Iowa, on 26 September 1946. She was married to William Hurt from 1971 to 1982, and then married film-maker Paul Schrader in 1983, with a daughter and a son. She died at an assisted living facility in Jersey City, New Jersey, on 28 March 28, 2026, aged 79, after battling Alzheimer’s disease.

Her notable films include Interiors (1978), The World According to Garp (1982), The Age of Innocence (1993), Six Degrees of Separation (1993) and her husband Paul Schrader’s Light Sleeper (1992) and Affliction (1997).

She was close friends with Glenn Close.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 7,658

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