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Dad-of-three Charles Dance has had film and TV roles in everything from Last Action Hero to The Imitation Game, Bleak House, Game of Thrones and The Crown.
As financier Timothy Winthrop in The Day of the Jackal, Charles Dance plays the Jackal’s employer. But while, at 79-years-old he is a vastly more experienced actor than Eddie Redmayne, 44, who plays the assassin, he would never tell his younger colleague what to do. Charles says: “Christ, no! I would not dream of doing that. Not at all. Certainly not with someone like Eddie. He is terrific and very bright. He is utterly believable.”
Currently filming the second series of the Sky Atlantic spy drama, set in Budapest and adapted from the Frederick Forsyth novel, as he approaches 80, Charles is showing no sign of slowing down. Based in Islington, north London, the actor, whose partner is Italian production manager and former actress Alessandra Masi, made his name playing Guy Perron in the 1984 TV series The Jewel in the Crown.
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Seen competing against 007 on the ski slopes, Charles says: “Roger was wonderful and an absolute gent. I had one line in the Bond movie which John Glenn tried to cut. I asked to say ‘get him,’ as I cornered Roger Moore's Bond in Corfu. I was in a beach buggy and I had a gun and said ‘get him.’ At that time, a frog man appears out of the waves with a harpoon and kills me. “Up to that point, there were a lot of scenes where I had been trying to corner Bond. So, Roger stepped in and said ‘no, you can’t cut the line, as it is rather amusing.’"
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The Bond movie was also memorable for a rather embarrassing injury. He recalls: “There was a point [when][ we were fighting going down a ski jump and get to the bottom and some kind of explosion happened. I said I could do it as I had learned to do falls. I did not want a stunt man, so we did the shot. As we did it, I did something to my shoulder really very badly. I then had to ride a motorbike after lunch, so I grabbed one of the ADs [assistant directors] and asked him if he could arrange for me to have an X-ray. I went to the hospital, as I had dislocated my shoulder. They gave me some painkillers.”
Returning to the film set, he asked the driver to stop, so he could collect a prescription. He says: “I was wearing a ski suit and it was very smart, all in one black. It was very chic. So I get back to the set and say to the AD ‘I need to pop this painkiller.’ I open it and notice it is a suppository! I have struggled in the hospital to get out of the ski suit and now I am faced with a suppository. I did manage it, but it was a struggle, I will tell you.”
He also reminisces about working on the 2001 movie Gosford Park with Robert Altman, who died in 2006. He laughs: “This is genuinely well known, so I am not talking out of school....the man is no longer with us. Really, if you wanted to have a conversation with Robert, it was best to do it before 4pm, because he used to have a joint after lunch most of the time.”
But he remembers the filmmaker fondly, adding: “He was a joy to work with as he just loved actors. There are a lot of directors for whom actors are an occupational hazard.”
Playing Lord Mountbatten in The Crown was rather complex for Charles, who says the peer was “extraordinary,” yet “loved and loathed".
He will be reprising the part in a new biopic about Wallis Simpson’s later life, starring Dame Joan Collins.
His senior at 91, Dame Joan has said she is “thrilled” to be playing the Duchess of Windsor, who she feels was “unfairly treated.” So far, Charles has remained tight-lipped about the film, due for release soon. But the actor is clear that he prefers film and TV to stage work, saying: “I prefer to work in front of a camera. I like the theatre when it goes well, but there are nights when it does not go well.”
Recalling the time he played C.S. Lewis in a touring version of Shadowlands (2007-2008) he says: “I was sobbing my guts out for eight shows a week for six months. It was purgatory. I have done a couple musicals a few years ago, but I can’t dance to save my life.”
Charles has forthright views on the scripts he is asked to read. He says: “A lot of the time it is called making a silk purse out of a pig's ear. Unfortunately, probably 7 out of 10 scripts are not as good as we would like them to be. It is incumbent on me not to look like a p**ck, you know.”
Mistaken for being aristocratic, he says “because of the way my face is put together,” Charles’ mother, from East London’s Bethnal Green, was actually a servant, aged 13. Born in Worcestershire, he went to primary school there and loved being in the school plays. Sadly, his father died when he was just three-and-a-half, but he was known for doing musical recitals and his mother was delighted when Charles became an actor.
Leaving school with just two O levels in English and art and with a pronounced stammer, he went to art school in Leicester and worked on a building site to pay for acting lessons. Yet, he made it into the RSC and never looked back. Recalling his first job in weekly rep, he says: “I started at the Prince of Wales Theatre in Colwyn Bay. There was a church opposite and it was quiet so I would go in there to learn next week's lines.
“There was a day when I was sat there, buried in a book, and the vicar came up and put his hand on my shoulder. He said ‘is everything alright?’ He thought I was a troubled youth contemplating suicide or something. I told him I was just learning my lines!” When Charles went on the BBC show Who Do You Think You Are? In 2017, he knew his dad Walter had been married before meeting his mum, was surprised to learn that he had two half sisters - Norah, born in 18981 and Mary, born in 1903.
Mary had died in an accident on a building site when she was just five. Norah married a South African in 1921 and emigrated there - followed by Walter - who had fought in the Boer War - and his first wife Louie, in 1924. They returned to the UK when Walter fell ill, only for Louie to die in 1932.
Charles’ mother also had a son, Michael, in 1936, who was not Walter’s. Happy to be working at his age, Charles says: “I am very lucky to do a job that I love. I am very fortunate to be in this business [where I] do a job I love and to get paid reasonably well for it.
“I used to play a romantic leading man until I became a villain. I have been all over the world in this job and sometimes I have made the mistake of taking a part because it is being filmed somewhere where I have never been to before. It may turn out to be a load of bilge, but at least I have been there!"
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