Photoshoot by Gavin Smith

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CHARLES DANCE and his wife parted after 33 years, exchanging their exquisite manor house for two London flats, it seemed he was starting all over again. But, he tells MOIRA PETTY, he can iron and cook as well as any woman and, as his new career proves, knows that love can be found at any age Charles Dance, one of the romantic icons of his generation - a tag by which he is equally irked and flattered - is grappling for a phrase to encapsulate his views on matters of the heart. 'It's a trite expression,' he begins apologetically, but there is an intense glitter in his pale, hooded eyes. 'It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.' He is talking about the late-blooming love felt by one of the two elderly sisters for a young stranger washed up on a Cornish beach in Ladies In Lavender, an exquisite new film featuring Charles not as an actor but as first-time director. And yet the clichE tumbles out of his mouth with such heartfelt emotion that you can't help wondering if it is a subliminal hint as to his own state of mind.

A year ago, it was revealed that his 33-year marriage to his darkly beautiful sculptress wife, Joanna, was over. The couple met at art school, married at 23 and went on to have two children, Oliver, now 30, and Rebecca, 24. In 1989 they bought a Pounds 1 million, 17th-century manor house in Somerset, set over five acres of grounds in which peacocks flaunted themselves and geese roamed....

Dancing to a Different Tune

Now the grand family home has gone, replaced by a London flat for each. 'I miss the quality of the air and the quiet, when I wanted it, in the country.

I miss the opportunity to go out and do manual labour. I used to be able to go out and dig or build something in the grounds. In Kentish Town, north London, I've only got a small postage stampsized garden.' A postage stamp could never contain the restless quality of the rangy, 6ft 3in actor who turned 58 last month but has seemingly never solidified into middle age.

'I feel 35. I probably behave 25,' he says. As he and his wife were going their separate ways, he was plunging himself into a frenzy of pre-production for Ladies In Lavender, which he adapted as well as directed.