Charles on the cover of Staysure mag june 2010

Strictly Dance

07 Feb 2011 - 02:55 PM

Charles Dance is one of that exclusive club of British actors who are instantly recognisable without ever having been a tremendous star. At 64, he could easily pass for ten years younger, his strong physique as upright as ever and the detached twinkle still evident in those glacial grey-blue eyes. The voice too is instantly identifiable: slightly elocuted, deep, resonant with an edge that can turn brusque. His sandy hair, swept back in open defiance of slight erosion and his senatorial nose complete the portrait of an actor who has been on screens both large and small as well as theatres for the better part of 25 years.

“I prefer film,” he volunteers, as we get comfortable in the living room of his tasteful but unostentatious house in North London. “I like the people who work in film, I like the family atmosphere that is created on a film. As an actor, I like the theatre when it goes well. We all get into this business because we want to be appreciated and that is most evident in the theatre. We all want to be loved. Any actor who tells you different is lying. But theatre takes over your life. And it is nerve-wracking. I’m not a sociable actor. I like to get out of the theatre as quickly as possible after the curtain falls. Job done.”

Dance was born in Redditch, Worcestershire, in 1946, the son of an engineer who died when Charles was four. After his mother, Nell, a former parlour maid, remarried, the family moved to Plymouth. Dance trained at Plymouth Art School and then Leicester College of Arts and Design, where he was encouraged to enter the theatre by two drama coaches. A stint in provincial rep was followed by the RSC and he was on his way. In 1984 he became a household name in the role of Guy Perron in television’s The Jewel in the Crown. Films and television followed consistently including Plenty, White Mischief, Pascali’s Island, right up to Bleak House and Trinity. His many fans (both male and female) believe he should have played James Bond, but he settled for playing Ian Fleming in TV’s Goldeneye. On stage he has distinguished himself in Coriolanus, Shadowlands and Good.

While Dance was awarded an OBE in recognition of his work in 2006, he assures me he was never a hugely ambitious actor. “I have never been cardinally ruthless about my career. I’ve never been to LA and camped out. When you get to 64, work begins to thin out. A few years ago I was too young to play the parts I play now. The optimum age for a Hollywood lead is 30. I’ve never been in a particularly marketable position. I’m not too proud to put myself on tape or go for a reading as some other experienced actors are. We’re all products and the thing is that we must make the product look as good as possible.”

His practical, no-nonsense attitude to his business does not mean he undervalues the art. He is a pragmatist, understanding that film is expensive and now requires ‘names’ just to get financed. It is clearly annoying, but he speaks from direct experience, having written and directed his first film, Ladies in Lavender, he is currently raising finance for his second, The Inn at the Edge of The World, based on the 1990 novel by Alice Thomas Ellis. “I keep hearing that we are dangerously close to closing the deal,” he says with a wry smile (he’s good at wry smiles). “I had to halve the budget but it is still very much cast-dependent. I could cast it tomorrow with wonderful British actors, none of whom would raise a dime. The business side seems to be swamping the artistic side more and more.” Indeed, when he tried to sell Ladies in Lavender (“Two old ladies in a cottage in Cornwall and nothing much happens”) to television he was rejected at every turn. When he secured the services of Maggie Smith and Judi Dench he got the film made. “Commercially, it did very well because the people who supported it were the grey pound, or grey dollar. It is a market that is not being catered for and it is really silly to ignore it.”

British television is particularly prone to financial cutbacks, he says. The BBC and ITV are “penny-pinching like Hell.” Things have to be made faster and more cheaply and quality suffers as a result. There are the odd moments of luxury: Terry Pratchett’s Going Postal which he did recently for Sky (“They seem to be putting money into things”) and he is having an enjoyable time shooting a film for German television in Scotland based on a book by Rosamund Pilcher.

Occasionally, aware that he is getting on his high horse, he reins himself in. It is almost as if he feels that to become too complaining would be somehow untidy, disorderly. “I like order and I strive to maintain it, though I don’t always succeed,” he confesses. “I’m a creature of my environment. Time seems to go much more quickly than it used to.”

Aware, though not obsessed with the ageing process, Dance has a regime that is almost military in its precision. Every morning he goes swimming for 30 minutes in the unheated Lido on Parliament Hill Fields – winter aside – and works out with his own weights and cycle at home. “I do something every day, a bit of yoga, pilates and a bit of military stuff.”

Clearly, it is a regime that pays off. I have noticed several English actors who have the commanding presence and authority of soldiers, in spite of never having been near the army. The late Edward Woodward had it in spades. Dance has it, too, with a dash of old-school colonialism thrown in. This may be an associative hangover of some of his roles, Guy Perron in Jewel in the Crown, the Earl of Errol in White Mischief, but in person he has the same easy authority and command that makes him a natural for such roles. He begins the day with a bowl of fruit and I am slightly surprised to find that he still smokes, albeit the relatively non-toxic cigarettes American Spirit. Some vices are harder to give up than others.

He keeps his private life to himself as far as possible. His two children, Rebecca and Oliver, by his former wife, Joanna, are doing well, he says guardedly. Neither of them are actors, though Oliver works in film as a third Assistant Director.

But while we had agreed not to stray too deeply into personal territory, Dance cannot help himself. He asks my opinion of a bronze bust of himself sitting in his living room. It is a fine likeness; I voice my approval and he smiles.

“My girlfriend, Eleanor, did that. Talented as well as beautiful.”
He shows me a photograph of them together just to prove his point. It is not vanity but genuine pride – and perhaps surprise – that he could have landed such a gifted, gorgeous girl, some years younger than he.

He has, it seems, a particular penchant for clever, vivacious women. Among his dream dinner party guests he includes Josephine Hart and Fanny Ardant. “I’ve done a lot of poetry readings with Josephine. I’m one of her pool of readers. She is informative, interesting and she likes actors. I’ve learnt so much from Josephine. I’m not very well read and she has opened doors for me. I met Fanny Ardant at the Institut Francais and we have talked about doing a project together. I’d love to do The Lion in Winter with her but the rights aren’t available. But we text each other and have lunch whenever I’m in Paris. There is a gratifying amount of mutual admiration.” He also recalls his first meeting with Catherine Deneuve, another subject of his admiration.

“I gripped her hand and started to gabble,” he recalls. “After a while I could see her smile turn into a fixed grin of alarm as if she was thinking: ‘Is this man ever going to let me have my hand back?”

When this digression on the allure of grand French actresses comes to an end by mutual agreement, he lights another cigarette and we discuss his current reading and musical tastes. He pushes a book towards me, The Junior Officers’ Reading Club, and heartily recommends it. It is by a former officer in the Grenadier Guards, Patrick Hennessy, and it uncaps the reality of what it is like to be in Iraq and Afghanistan. “I was at The Sun Military Awards at The Imperial War Museum and I was seated at a table with three guys from bomb disposal unit. These men are risking their lives every day for us. They don’t get paid much and the government still takes income tax. I don’t think any soldier on active service should pay income tax.”

He says he has got into trouble making similar remarks before but it is a fair point and he is quite impassioned about it. Strangely enough, although he is by no means an agitating actor in the manner of Corin Redgrave or, lately, Jeremy Irons, he possesses the cool authority and quiet passion that would be perfect suited to the political arena. Like Joanna Lumley did with her Gurkha campaign, one feels that Dance could make a difference.