Actor Charles Dance

samedi 12 novembre 2011

Charles and late Simon Mac Corkindale and Christopher Cazenove

Photoshoot by Gavin Smith to illustrate an interview

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.

Charles Master class : pics by Stuart Allen in 2007

http://www.masterclass.org.uk/masters.php?ar_id=32

Charles was at Babel screening in 2006

Charles arrives at the Times BFI 50th London Film Festival Screening of Babel on closing night at the Odeon Cinema, on November 2, 2006....a movie with Brad Pitt and Gael Garcia Bernal

Charles in Hey Joe ! from Sydney festival in 2007

"Throughout Eh Joe that face is examined by a camera in the wings. Dance's emotions can be seen in the flicker of a muscle, the slight movement of an eye. It's a supreme exercise in control. "I'm having to pull it back all the time. It's a fascinating thing to do. It's a very, very strange experience."

In Beckett's Eh Joe, Charles Dance (substituting for Michael Gambon) in dressing gown in a small dim room, closes the curtains over windows, cupboard and door and sits in profile to the audience. His face appears, gigantic and slowly growing, on the scrim between us, every detail of his face writ large as a female voice begins its litany of accusations—in his head, or filtering through the floorboards, in the air between us. Dance distributes the changes in his expression sparely, initially with glowering intensity and then a weakening into vulnerability as the truth, or whatever it is it, hits home and a tear falls at the end of the half hour performance. If Krapp worries at his own earlier recorded and often forgotten utterances, at least the voice is his own. Joe is like a man haunted and rendered speechless, or is the voice his own ventriloquism, the only way he can admit his doubts and crimes? Directed by Atom Egoyan, the screen device with its double view of Dance, apart and face-to-face with us, worked strongly both emotionally and as an easily accommodated theatre-cinema hybrid.
http://www.realtimearts.net/article/77/8328

Eh Joe is a much more contemplative piece. Joe (Charles Dance), his face projected on a translucent scrim stretched across the entire stage, sits alone in a dingy room, tormented by a woman's voice. Unable to defend himself, his agony plays out in tiny spasms of his face, culminating in a solitary tear.

The cinematic quality of the piece overwhelms its theatricality (Canadian filmmaker Atom Egoyan directs) but it's undeniably gripping and Dance's command of his facial tics is remarkable. It's the lesser of the three Beckett pieces in this Sydney Festival but even then Eh Joe offers more than most plays you're likely to see this year.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/arts-reviews/ill-go-on-eh-joe/2007/01/22/1169330811611.html

An article from The Daily Telegraph, January 15, 2007

WHEN Michael Gambon was forced to relinquish the lead role of Samuel Beckett's Eh Joe at the last minute the show's producers must have been frantic.

That they managed to snare the services of English heavyweight Charles Dance (Bleak House, Gosford Park, Nicholas Nickleby) with only a matter of days to opening night is truly remarkable.

While the lead role of Joe requires no words, the power of Eh Joe – originally written for television in 1965 - hangs on the lead’s ability to express his thoughts and emotions purely through his facial expressions.

This production, by Dublin’s the Gate Theatre and directed by Atom Egoyan (ATOM EGOYAN), remains truthful to the original TV script despite the change in medium.

The set is starkly simple: a dingy, almost empty room, its only furniture a single bed. As the lights go up, the room’s sole occupant - Joe, a man in his late 50s/early 60s, dressed in old pyjamas, a tatty dressing gown and worn slippers - is seated on the bed, his back to the audience.

The television conventions of the original play have been adapted well - a screen at the front of the stage initially provides the set with a foggy, almost misty aura.

Then a few minutes in, when Joe begins to battle his tormenting voice, a close-up of his face is projected onto that same screen and the actor’s every nuance is highlighted.

As mentioned earlier, Dance is a fine replacement for Gambon as the world-weary and tormented Joe. His patrician features are tailor-made to the role. Though he says no words, he nevertheless speaks volumes.

Yet, while Eh Joe is imbued with a quiet intensity, at little more than 25 minutes in total, it is not substantial enough to be touted as a stand-alone production. But if coupled with one of Beckett’s meatier plays it would have worked wonderfully as the first part of a Beckett double bill.

Nevertheless, this is a wonderful opportunity - albeit all too brief - to enjoy an actor of Charles Dance’s calibre in the flesh.

Also, be warned, Eh Joe is certainly not for those in quest of "light" viewing.

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/eh-joe-review/story-e6frev39-1111112833231