a pic from Midnight's children

                                nice hat

Charles on BBC radio 4

today at 19h15 mn....With Kirsty Lang...Common ground promotion

The actor Charles Dance is best-known for playing quintessential Englishmen and villains. He reflects on his latest TV role as an ageing former rock-band manager, compares the experiences of working on both sides of the Atlantic, and looks back on his career.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01q97ts

clips and poster with Charles as Floyd

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Interview from TV Choice

to promote Common ground

https://aboutactorcharlesdance.blogspot.com/

 

Charles Dance kicks off Sky Atlantic's new series of short plays — which also star Jessica Hynes, Katy Brand, Rufus Jones, Brendan Coyle, Johnny Vegas and Josie Lawrence — by playing a role very different from the normal smoothie we see him portraying on TV. Charles tells TV Choice more...

So how did you react to the idea of playing retired rock tour manager Floyd?I just went for it. In this business you are what you’re seen to be, and I’m seen to be most of the time po-faced and villainous and rather well-dressed, and all that kind of nonsense. I don’t very often get asked to do comedy. The last comedy I did was in the theatre 15 or more years ago. So when something like this comes along, absolutely, Christ yes.

Would you have liked a career in sitcoms?

I wouldn’t mind doing a sitcom — I think there’s mileage in this, to be frank with you. I think there’s endless storylines we could weave around this particular character. There are endless places he could go.

Floyd gets invited to a school to talk about his tour manager days. Have you had to do these school appearances for real, to talk about your career?

God, no. Why would I want to do that? Floyd wanted to do it because he was kind of flattered by it. I mean, he’s an ex-tour manager and I know a bunch of roadies who have been working with the Rolling Stones for a long time, and they’re all would-be rock 'n’ roll stars themselves, you know. They’re not actually musicians, they’re tour managers, they’re pretty close. But Floyd’s quite flattered he’s been asked to talk about his early days.

Has this given you a thirst to do more comedy?I think all actors like to do comedy, sure. But we all have to earn a living, and as much as we try to avoid typecasting most of us kind of get bracketed one way or another, although we try to avoid it. It depends how much money you’ve got in the bank, if you’ve got enough money to say no to something. I mean, I would jump at the chance to do more comedy, provided it was well-written, which this is.

Is Floyd closer to who you really are?

Only in as much as there is nothing aristocratic about me, despite my being asked to play toffee-nosed people, just because of the way my face is put together. But that’s not the kind of background I come from. But I don’t know that I’m particularly close to somebody like Floyd!

 Is it a challenge to do a drama that's only 10 minutes long?

Yes, a bit. You have to be well-prepared, because there’s no buggering about, and if you’ve got lines you’d better know your lines, because nobody has enough time — the cinematographer doesn’t have enough time, the make-up lady doesn’t have enough time. Preparation is all. And I have that kind of attitude with most things I do. I’ve never been able to kind of busk it. I mean, the best improvisation is very well-rehearsed — you go in so that you can do it standing on your head.

Do you get asked for advice a lot by younger actors?

I don’t think I’m a natural teacher. I did a day once at the Actors’ Centre, and I reeled out of there with a migraine! I was in this room with no windows, and it was air-conditioned, and I just got the most terrible headache from it. And I had half a dozen people and I just thought they all seemed bloody good, there didn’t seem to be very much I could teach ‘em, actually. I don’t know that you can, you can only talk about technique, and even if someone has the most iron-like technique, if they don’t have any talent there’s not much you do, really.

What do you like to watch on TV?It sounds a terrible cliché, but dear old David Attenborough is just compelling, because he takes great pains to make sure that people understand what he’s talking about. The only kind of reality television I think is worth watching is Gareth Malone’s choirs, I think he’s extraordinary. And I like cookery programmes, because I quite like cooking, and I have a reasonable repertoire. I think Jamie Oliver is inspirational, you can’t help but admire that kind of fervour, and integrity, and what he’s done in schools. I’ve been to a couple of his restaurants and they’re bloody good. But there’s an awful lot of rubbish on television, which I try to avoid. I think the X Factor is the pits because it’s encouraging this cult of celebrity that’s nothing to do with developing and honing a talent and a craft, and I think that’s a great shame, and could be quite damaging.

 Do you think it encourages cruelty?I don’t think cruelty needs encouraging. I think people will be cruel, but I think it’s a very risky business, to put people in that position where they are victims of it. I think it’s kind of unscrupulous. I don’t like it. And a lot of the time you’re not looking at talent, you’re looking at kids imitating other people, they all make the same kind of noise, you know?

 Sky Atlantic, Monday, Martina Fowler
http://www.tvchoicemagazine.co.uk/interviewextra/charles-dance-common-ground 

https://aboutactorcharlesdance.blogspot.com/

Charles on stage as a reader

http://aboutactorcharlesdance.blogspot.fr/2013/01/charles-will-be-at-those-events-this.html
On Sunday, 27 January, acclaimed poets Seamus Heaney and Simon Armitage will appear together on the stage of The Tricycle Theatre, London, in ‘Inspirations’, a performance of the poetry and prose which has inspired each poet in their work and in their lives.  The poets’ selections will be read by the poets themselves, supported by West End actors Charles Dance and Jenny Jules.

pics of the event :  

 

 

 

 

 

 

     

 Inspirations at Tricycle Theatre by Rosie Lavan
It was a full house at the Tricyle last Sunday night when Seamus Heaney and Simon Armitage took to the stage of the Kilburn theatre at a special fundraising event for English PEN. At £35 for an unreserved seat, the tickets weren’t cheap, as PEN president Gillian Slovo noted in her opening remarks. But they did sell out.
  ....Each poet introduced their selections one by one and they were joined on stage by the actors Charles Dance and Jenny Jules, who read the works that they had chosen...... Dance has an inimitable stage presence: he is a consummate actor. He charged the atmosphere with the modulations of voice and accent he brought to each piece of writing he read. He put on traces of a Yorkshire accent for his reading of Ted Hughes’s ‘Bayonet Charge’ and ‘The Bull Moses’, and of an Irish accent for two particularly evocative passages chosen by Heaney, the opening of Patrick Kavanagh’s long poem ‘The Great Hunger’, as well as an extract from the first episode of Joyce’s Ulysses. And in perhaps the most unexpected of Heaney’s selections, he made a fine Falstaff, delivering the old lewd knight’s paean to the wondrous and varied effects of drink from Henry IV, Part 2. Together, Dance and Jules read Armitage’s chosen extract from Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot and the surreally atmospheric poem ‘A Sound Like Distant Thunder’ by James Tate, to great comic effect.              
 ....Even Dance was visibly struck by the effect of these words, spoken by his co-reader
from :  http://www.oxonianreview.org/wp/inspirations-at-tricycle-theatre/

 

from Telegraph :     I can't think of a better way to spend a winter's evening than in the company of  two fine poets. Organised by English Pen( all proceedswent to the cahrity), Inspirations at the Tricycle Theatre in North London brought Seamus Heaney and Simon Armitage on stage together. Each poet selected 10 pieces of writing-verse or prose- that meant something special to them. Bringing the reading to life were the actors Charles Dance and Jeremy Jules.
....Dance read the rich landscape descriptions in a light Irish accent....It was a shame, though, that Dance and Jules were not especially well-rehearsed and stumbled onthe quickfire back and forths....
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/9832497/Seamus-Heaney-and-Simon-Armitage-Inspirations-at-the-Tricycle-Theatre.html