Richard Kline

The Persistence of a Character Actor

Richard Kline entered the collective imagination in 1977 with an unbuttoned shirt and a confidence that didn't quite fit him. His performance as Larry Dallas in the comedy Three's Company brought him instant fame but also a label that was hard to shake.

It was no accident that he was cast.

Kline came from a solid classical training and had worked at Lincoln Center before television claimed his face for mass audiences. And although many actors sink when the series that made them rich goes off the air, he chose to return to his roots.

But the road wasn't linear, because Hollywood tends to forget those who don't headline the posters. In the nineties, his work centered on theater directing and brief appearances that kept his bank account safe.

A Haven on the Stage and the Method

Theater became his headquarters during the lean years on screen. Kline soon realized that the technique he had learned from the classics would let him age with dignity on stage while television spotlights searched for younger faces.

In 2010, he joined the Wicked tour to play the Wizard, showing that his vocal training was still intact. It was a period of steady work away from the trend-driven magazine spotlight, where the actor refined his ability to sustain daily performances without losing freshness.

The stage doesn't forgive timing mistakes.

And that discipline allowed him to return to television with a different kind of authority. In the series The Americans, during 2013, he delivered a restrained performance that had nothing to do with the canned laughter of his younger days. But his greatest personal victory came through teaching, since Kline devotes much of his time to leading acting workshops in New York.

Maturity in the 2020s

In 2022, he appeared in the series Blue Bloods as a judge in a storyline that brought him back into view for the wider American audience. His acting style has evolved toward an economy of gestures that comes only from five uninterrupted decades of craft.

During 2024 he was part of the cast of the TV movie The Great Lillian Hall alongside Jessica Lange. In this project, Kline plays a veteran actor in a production that explores the limits of memory and professional decline in the world of show business.

The gamble paid off.

In 2025 he joined the shoot of the independent feature The Way We Speak, where he plays a public speaking teacher with authoritarian tendencies. The shoot was completed in eighteen days on a budget of less than two million dollars, with a technical plan based entirely on fixed shots.