John Lithgow stars in "Dexter."

Okay, John Lithgow, you got me good.

I had been telling Mr. Lithgow how, as an actor, he has the ability to make me laugh really hard, but he also has a creepy capability that can scare the crap out of me. He certainly taps into his creepy side in the new season of Dexter, which returns tonight on The Movie Network and Movie Central.

"I think there's something very bland and neutral about me," Lithgow said. "I'm like Mr. Potato Head. You can put things onto this face for a completely different effect.

"This was always Bonnie Turner's theory about me. Bonnie and Terry Turner created Third Rock from the Sun. She said, 'The great thing about you is how completely bland and non-descript you are.' Which I took as a very peculiar compliment.

"But I know what she means. You don't quite know where I'm going to go."

At that moment, out of the blue, at a crowded party in Los Angeles, John Lithgow screamed in my face.

"Arrghh!!!" he bellowed. My heart just about jumped through my chest.

"You see what I mean?" he said.

When I started breathing again, I laughed like hell. Funny guy, that John Lithgow.

There is very little funny about The Trinity Killer, however. That's the character Lithgow plays in the fourth season of Dexter, which stars Michael C. Hall as a full-time Miami police blood-splatter expert and part-time good-guy serial killer who only kills bad dudes.

"The character's name is Arthur Mitchell, but he's known as the Trinity Killer before you even learn his name," said Lithgow, 63. "He kills in threes for initially inexplicable reasons that gradually unfold over the course of the 12 episodes."

Lithgow hadn't seen much of Dexter before signing up for the critically acclaimed series.

"I knew the premise of the show and I'd seen half an episode halfway through the first season," Lithgow said. "But you know how it is when you watch a show like this and you don't know what's going on. You have to start at the beginning and I always thought, 'Well, I will some day.'

"I finally did after I'd taken the role. I absolutely love it. I'm so pleased I'm on such a great show."

At the risk of having Lithgow startle me again with his unpredictable stylings, he really is deft at exhibiting the extremes of hilarious and terrifying.

"I come out of the theatre, I come out of Shakespeare, and when you think about it, every actor in a Shakespeare company plays comedy, plays romance, plays horror, plays tragedy," Lithgow said. "To me, that's where it all comes.

"Shakespeare would have loved Dexter. It's very Shakespearian. When you think about Shakespeare, he wrote the most captivating, entertaining, funny and engaging villains. And not only that, the villains talked right to the audience, just the way Dexter does."

From Shakespeare to Dexter and everything in between, John Lithgow clearly is the right man for the job, whether he's talking or screaming.