Interview in Variety : Charles Dance Looks Back at His Showbiz Start

January 2, 2015

Awards season contender “The Imitation Game"is the latest opportunity for esteemed stage, TV and film thesp Charles Dance to make malevolence look utterly polished and tasteful. The Brit made his proper stage debut 40 years ago with the Royal Shakesoeare Company, after sharing music-hall stages with several English vaudeville greats.

In 1976, you were touring America with the Royal Shakespeare Company and went on for Alan Howard in Brooklyn.

I was doing supporting roles in productions such as “Henry IV” and “Henry V” and Ben Kingsley’s “Hamlet” and was the understudy for Alan. I got the call at 4 in the afternoon that Alan had taken ill and I’d be performing (in “Henry V”) in his place. It scared the shit out of me.

http://aboutactorcharlesdance.blogspot.fr/

How’d that turn out?

I got into the “Once more unto the breach” speech — the one everyone knows — and I went stone dead in the middle of it. My mouth went dry, no saliva, only air and adrenaline. All of the actors around me were trying to help, whispering lines at me and they were all the wrong lines! Eventually I found my way back.

When we asked you about your first time in Variety, you thought we meant the variety shows you once worked on.

In the early 1970s, before the RSC, I had worked in variety, which was our word for vaudeville or music hall.

Sounds colorful.

We did “Toad of Toad Hall” and I played Badger. And I worked with one of the foremost male impersonators of all time, Hetty King, who was about 89. There was Fred Emney, who had a monocle and cigar, and Sandy Powell, who did a drunk ventriloquist act and the dummy’s limbs would fall off. And Leslie Sarony, who sang risque songs and played the ukulele.

 

And this prepared you for “Henry V”?

No, but I learned a lot at RSC from Ben Kingsley and especially Alan Howard. He had a way of speaking blank verse that really shined a light on every word. He treated each soliloquy as if it were an operatic aria. He had an extraordinary voice and he knew how to push it.

This sounds like that great training we always hear is in the background of great British actors.

It was a great time because — let’s face it — we all deal with the reality of many not so great scripts today. And that was when I learned to love Shakespeare, the greatest writer of all time. I had just begun to see the light of his work. I was on that train and it was taking me along and I had a great seat.

http://variety.com/2015/film/awards/charles-dance-looks-back-at-his-showbiz-start-1201391210/

12 Awesome 2014 Performances In Otherwise Awful Movies      

   11. Charles Dance – Dracula Untold

The Movie: Despite plenty of potential, the first film in the new Universal Monsters franchise gets the series off to a limp start, with the talented Luke Evans being forced through the motions in a dull mess of lame action and incoherent plotting.

The Performance: Charles Dance plays the Master Vampire, the one who turns Vlad (Evans) into a vampire in the first place. Kitted out in heavy make-up and spending the majority of his screen time mugging from a dark, dirty cave, he hams it up for the cheap seats and the results are easily the movie’s most entertaining moments.

Dance’s role is pretty much solely just to spout exposition and explain the plot, but he totally looks the part, and was surely a much better choice for the role than Charlie Cox, who is 36 years his junior and originally filmed the scenes before being replaced with Dance.

Dance also gets one hilariously memorable scene at the end of the movie, set in the present day, where he stalks Vlad and declares, “Let the games begin.” Dance’s delicious delivery of every syllable of dialogue makes the movie much more tolerable.

http://whatculture.com/film/12-awesome-2014-performances-otherwise-awful-movies.php/3