Jonathan Pryce

Played Lear at London's Almeida theatre in 2012, directed by Michael Attenborough. Some critics questioned the production's implication that Lear might have abused his daughters.

Tradition dictates that you should play Lear while you're young enough to lift Cordelia up and carry her. I was 65, and I put my back out doing it – I couldn't carry her for the entire second half of the production's run. I was having a lot of trouble with my knees, too. Having to kneel all the time was very painful. But at least when you're a king, there's always someone there to help you up.

I had been thinking about doing Lear for a while. Then, when I was playing Davies in The Caretaker [by Harold Pinter], some critics likened my performance to a kind of lower-class King Lear, so I decided to finally take the plungeMore than one director had asked me to do it, but I chose Michael Attenborough and the Almeida. I wanted it to feel intimate. A small space can be a challenge during the epic heath scenes but, ultimately, King Lear is a domestic tragedy. The Almeida seemed the right place.

We hit upon an abuse theme by accident. One day during rehearsals, I went to kiss one of the daughters, and it lasted a bit too long. Then I went to kiss the next one, and it lasted even longer. We broke for lunch and Michael said: "My God, that was a really weird moment." We took it from there. We didn't go into it saying: "How are we going to make Lear appear to be a bad father?" But it began to make sense. Ultimately, it was less about abuse than the power parents can have over their children: that way of making their children feel they're a disappointment.

Lear is a fabulous role: it encompasses everything from tragedy to comedy. I'd played Edgar at the Liverpool Everyman 40 years before, when I was just starting out. Playing the older man's part was very different. As Edgar, I'd been prepared to appear half-naked. I certainly wasn't going to do that as Lear.

Edward Petherbridge, right, in My Perfect Mind. Photograph: Tristram Kenton for the Guardian

Edward Petherbridge

Had a stroke while rehearsing a version in New Zealand in 2007 and abandoned the role. In 2013, he made a show, My Perfect Mind, about his experience.

Doing any Shakespeare play is like trying to assemble flatpack furniture: you have to make it 3D by following Shakespeare's mysterious instructions. You feel you must get it absolutely as he intended, but it's very easy to come out with something that he might not even recognise: a commode, say, rather than a desk.

This struck me particularly when, in 2006, I was asked to play Lear for the Bacchanal company in Wellington, New Zealand. The offer came just before Christmas and it was the most wonderful present, but I didn't feel any particular affinity with the part: I was thinking more about the fact that Lear represents a kind of pinnacle for any actor. To begin with,I found the old man very difficult to relate to. He's so emotionally immature, so outrageously blinkered. I pride myself on being quite a good father to my three children. I know they love me. I don't have to set them a competition.

I wonder, then, whether New Zealand was actually quite lucky not to have had my Lear. Two days into rehearsals, I had a stroke, and had to withdraw. I hadn't wasted my time learning all those lines, though: we use many of them in My Perfect Mind. As we worked on that show, I thought about why Lear is giving his kingdom away. I wondered, suddenly, whether he has actually had a stroke. He's obviously feeling his age, at any rate, and wanting to lose the burden of running the country.

Would I still like to play Lear? Yes. If New Zealand telephoned again – or even Timbuktu – I'd be on the next plane.

Oliver Ford-Davies. Photograph: Tristram Kenton for the Guardian

Oliver Ford Davies

Appeared as Lear at the Almeida, London, in 2002. Wrote Playing Lear, a book about the character's joys and challenges.

Most actors, when they reach a certain position of eminence, think they've got to do Lear. Along with Hamlet, it's the apex for Shakespearean actors. You come to Hamlet with youthful vigour and a certain degree of innocence. But with Lear, having had 30 or 40 years of acting, you're supposed to know what you're doing.

You try to shake off the idea that it's a test, but it does feel like one. When I went to interview Ian McKellen in 2005, he said: "I don't have to do Lear, do I? Everybody expects me to." Not long after that, he agreed to do it for the RSC. But other actors have dodged the role. Once, while filming with Albert Finney, I asked whether we were going to see his Lear. "Oh God," he said, "eight shows a week doing Lear – no, no, no."

The first two acts are very hard.Lear is completely lacking in self-knowledge: both Hamlet and Macbeth get long soliloquies, but Lear is only given brief stabs of insight. And it's very difficult to determine what the play is ultimately about. Shakespeare does this strange thing of sticking to the story for the first two acts, then makes Lear go mad in a storm. You think: "Why did he do that? Is it meant to show that we're powerless in a random universe?"

The best Lear I ever saw was Paul Scofield's in 1962. I saw it three times. He had a wonderful iron control and brooding intensity. But even Scofield's wasn't totally satisfactory. I don't think it's possible. Lear is the ultimate opportunity to "fail again, fail better".

Kathryn Hunter. Photograph: Tristram Kenton for the Guardian

Kathryn Hunter

Played Lear at Leicester's Haymarket theatre in 1997. Also co-wrote My Perfect Mind (see Edward Petherbridge, above).

It was the director Helena Kaut-Howson who had the idea of casting a woman as Lear. She had recently lost her mother, who was extraordinary: very Lear-like. She didn't know I had a secret obsession with the character. I was about 35 and it seemed a completely crazy idea, but I said yes – and an incredible journey began.

Like many people, I first read Lear at school. I was 14 but immediately identified with Lear rather than Cordelia. I wonder now if this is because adolescence is a kind of crisis point, the same way old age is: both often involve going out into the storm, wondering why this isn't a perfect world.

I was always going to play Lear as a man – King Lear rather than Queen Lear – because so many of his attitudes are typically "male". But getting his physicality right was a challenge. Most of us imagine Lear as big, bearded, God-like. But one day during rehearsals in Leicester, I followed an old man – he must have been in his 80s – into Iceland. He was quite small and frail, but he had a real sense of authority. I thought: "If he were wearing a crown and surrounded by dignitaries, why couldn't he be King Lear?" Really, it's Lear's passions and heart that are huge, rather than his stature.

The play's first scene is the most difficult. But the more I think about it, the more plausible it seems. Lear is planning his retirement: he's going to retain his title and "all th' additions to a king", then go off and live with Cordelia. Often, when people die, those who are left fight over their will. Lear is thinking: "I'll make my will now, while I'm still alive and divide everything up." It might be a slightly preposterous plan, but it's not insane.

Timothy West. Photograph: Tristram Kenton for the Guardian

Timothy West

Has played the part three times, most recently in 2002-03, with English Touring Theatre.

I was ridiculously young the first time I played Lear. It was at the 1971 Edinburgh festival and I was still in my 30s. The second time was in Dublin in 1991. Each time you play the part, you change, the world changes, and audiences change. In 1971, the general feeling from the audience was: "Poor old guy with those two awful children – what a very unfair thing." By 1991, it was more: "Why does Lear need 100 knights? I can't even get somebody to do my garden."

I believe strongly that Lear is not as old as he says he is. If you play him as so old that it's reasonable for him to abdicate, then it just becomes a play about difficult family relations. It's much more effective to show that this man still has all his marbles to begin with and really should be ruling the country. The fact that he wants to go on being treated as a king without doing any of the work is, I think, one of the great sins in the Shakespearean book.

The role is physically and emotionally exhausting, particularly because you have to play through the real symptoms of whatever you decide the madness is. The first time I played Lear, I consulted a surgeon about senile dementia. He said: "No, you don't want to talk about senile dementia. What he's got is arteriosclerosis." He'd read the play and said it fitted all the known symptoms. He was jolly nearly right.

There's a great reward in telling such a complex story every night. And it's always very satisfying to die at the end of a play. You feel you can't go any further. You can get your costume off and go out and have a drink.