At one point, Sir Anthony Hopkins tried to adapt the play into a movie and intended to star as King Lear. Naomi Watts was cast as Goneril, Gwyneth Paltrow as Regan, and Keira Knightley as Cordelia, but the project never got off the ground and was eventually cancelled.
Florence Pugh (Cordelia) recalled feeling "terrified" when she attended the table read for this movie because "absolutely every actor I've looked up to and my family's been talking about my entire life was in one room."
Dame Emma Thompson (Goneril) said of Sir Anthony Hopkins' performance in this movie, "I will never see a better Lear, I know that. I will die not having seen anyone do it better."
Sir Anthony Hopkins has said that, according to an old saying, "by the time you are old enough to play Lear, you're too old to play Lear."
This was Sir Anthony Hopkins' fourth time playing the title character in a production based on a William Shakespeare play. He previously played Othello (1981), Antony - to Judi Dench's Cleopatra - (1987) and Titus (1999). He also played as Claudius in Hamlet (1969).