10 Great TV Shows Starring The How I Met Your Mother Cast

5. 3rd Rock From The Sun - John Lithgow

John Lithgow is arguably the best and most successful actor ever to grace How I Met Your Mother with his presence. A Tony, Emmy and Golden Globe winner with two Oscar nods under his belt, he's been a leading star on stage on screen for over five decades now.

In HIMYM, he starred as Barney's deadbeat father Jerry, a former rock 'n' roll roadie trying to turn his life around and reconnect with his son. Years earlier, he starred as the lead in the sci-fi sitcom 3rd Rock from the Sun, as the patriarch of an alien family who attempt to understand human behaviour.

The series ran for nearly 140 episodes over six seasons, charting this wildly out of place family as they come to terms with the complexities and hardships of what it means to be human.

Lithgow is deliriously funny in the lead role, as are his co-stars (including a young Joseph Gordon-Levitt), and watching it it becomes clear why he's become such a small screen icon.