Love Quote by David Ogden Stiers

There is something almost disarmingly practical in David Ogden Stiers saying he has played Lear three times and would gladly do it again. For actors, King Lear is less a role than a proving ground: a marathon of ego, grief, cruelty, and lucidity that punishes vanity and rewards craft. Stiers frames it like a habit you can’t quite quit, which is the point. Lear is the rare part that changes as the actor changes; each return is a new negotiation with age, voice, stamina, and whatever life has taught you about pride and loss.

The subtext is a quiet flex without the swagger. “Three times” signals legitimacy in the theater world, a résumé line that doesn’t need embellishment. “I would love” turns what could read as professional brag into appetite. It’s not completion, it’s hunger. That hunger also hints at what great classical roles offer character actors in particular: a chance to be centered, not supporting; to be seen as a full instrument, not just a reliable presence.

Context matters, too. Stiers is widely known to mass audiences for television, where repetition means reruns and typecasting. Onstage, repetition is refinement. Wanting Lear again reads as an actor choosing the hardest, least flattering mirror on purpose. Lear isn’t youth, charm, or likability. It’s collapse. And for a performer with Stiers’s intelligence and precision, collapse is a kind of virtuosity.