Lithgow said he worked on the movie for four years before it was released

John Lithgow’s role as Lord Farquaad in Shrek might be iconic now, but he didn’t expect it to be when he first joined the project.

In a video posted March 13, had Lithgow read lines from some of his roles and test if he remembered which movies they were from. The first —  “Some of you may die, but it's a sacrifice I'm willing to make" — was instantly recognizable to both the 79-year-old star and legions of Shrek fanatics as a line from Lord Farquaad.

But the Conclave star revealed that he never really thought the movie would become the sensation it now is. “I thought it was like a Saturday morning cartoon or something. Not a big deal,” he said.

When he joined the movie, he said, “I read my dialogue. They showed me a maquette of this little character, Lord Farquaad. And they showed me a lot of storyboards, animated storyboards. And I thought, well, this looks like fun.” The writers “pitched” him on what made the character funny, and he signed on.

But the path to the movie’s 2001 release ended up being a lot longer than he expected. “The curious thing was that was, like, four years before we ever saw Shrek,” he said. “And they would bring me back in once every eight months or so to record some new material. And it was like, ‘Oh, I gotta do this Shrek thing again? What is this?’ ”