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Charles Dance at 74: ‘I’m in reasonably good shape for a man of my age’

Dance with girlfriend Alessandra Masi in Venice in September - COBRA TEAM / BACKGRID
Dance with girlfriend Alessandra Masi in Venice in September - COBRA TEAM / BACKGRID

By his own admission, Charles Dance has always been more or less a private man. He doesn’t court publicity – ‘I don’t have a press agent,’ he says, ‘I’ve never understood why people do’ – and certainly doesn’t court the paparazzi. But last September he dropped the ball, and boy, did he pay for it.

Dance was in Venice with his girlfriend, the Italian film producer Alessandra Masi, when he thought he’d found a quiet portion of beach, away from prying eyes and snapping lenses, to enjoy a splash. As it happened, he hadn’t gone far enough.

The next day, the tabloids, bless them, were ablaze. Photographs, lots of photographs, showed Dance and Masi, 53, canoodling in the surf, but the headlines all picked up the same theme.

‘Charles Dance shows off his impressive beach body at 73,’ panted one. ‘Game of Thrones star Charles Dance shows off his buff physique,’ heaved another. This paper was even moved to ask: ‘What is Charles Dance’s 70-something secret?’

Some three decades after he turned down an audition to be James Bond on account of believing he was ‘too ginger’, here was Dance’s 007 moment at last. So, did he happen to catch that coverage?

As we’re more used to seeing him… Charles Dance -  John Balsom
As we’re more used to seeing him… Charles Dance - John Balsom

He emits a rasping, baritone laugh and squirms slightly. ‘Yes, let my guard drop a bit there, I just forgot. I shouldn’t have, the number of years I’ve been doing this job… But, you know, that terrible old cliché – it’s better to be looked-over than overlooked in our business.’

In his study at home in north London, Dance, now 74, is full of mirth, anecdote and wisdom. As early spring sunshine pours through the gaps in a blackout blind, he rocks on a desk chair in front of a stack of old CDs, the light catching on his now-silvering locks.

‘I mustn’t grumble. The sun is shining, spring looks as if it’s finally here…’ He’s just been to the garden centre. ‘What I plan to do is start a better vegetable garden than last year. I grew a few potatoes, some carrots… The cabbages didn’t turn out too well. Boring broccoli. I’m going to do that a bit more efficiently.’

As we began our call, an Italian accent could be heard off-camera (‘Check the volume on your computer!’ it implored, for which it was thanked). Dance confirms that he and Masi, who moved in last year, have spent lockdown together.

She may be one reason for his contentment, but another might be the late-career flourish Dance is enjoying. From Game of Thrones, in which he was the scheming Lord Tywin Lannister, to The Crown, in which he was the scheming Earl Mountbatten, he’s never been more profligate in stealing scenes, and never more in-demand. As one US publication put it recently, ‘Instead of, “Hey, it’s that guy,” it’s [now], “Hey, it’s Charles f—king Dance.”’

With girlfriend Alessandra Masi earlier this month -  BACKGRID
With girlfriend Alessandra Masi earlier this month - BACKGRID

The latest on Charles Dance’s production line of memorable turns is as newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst in Mank, David Fincher’s Oscar-buzzy Netflix film about the making of Citizen Kane. Set in 1940 and shot like an Old Hollywood noir, in it Gary Oldman plays the titular Herman Mankiewicz, a prodigious but tempestuous screenwriter tasked by a 24-year-old Orson Welles (played by British actor Tom Burke) to pen his big picture debut.

Dance enters the fray at key moments as the imposing Hearst, whose life as a tyrannical press baron famously inspired the character of Kane. And, yes, he pinches most of his scenes. Dance appeared in Fincher’s first film, Alien 3, some three decades ago, but they’ve kept in touch over the years.

‘Out of the blue, I got this email saying he’s making a film around the making of Citizen Kane, and how would I like to go over and play Hearst? He said, “It’s a glorified extra, but I’d love you to do it,”’ Dance recalls. ‘I read the script and thought it was a bit more than a glorified extra, more of a telling cameo, but I said, “David, I would come and change light bulbs for you.”’

In reality, the role is far more even than a telling cameo. Despite ‘physically bearing no resemblance’ to Hearst, Dance lends it all his gravitas. Decades of playing villains – from For Your Eyes Only to Last Action Hero, right up to Game of Thrones – has given his hooded eyes and hooked features a gently menacing air. Add to that age and fine ’40s tailoring, and he’s perfectly ominous.

‘I read a couple of books, tried to get examples of his voice, [but] also thought about people of my generation, like Rupert Murdoch and – although he’s considerably down the intellectual scale – Donald Trump. Hearst was an extraordinarily wealthy man, but he was a bit of a megalomaniac, and veered between being entertaining and charming and being a complete bastard.’

The research made him consider the intersection of power, wealth, politics and the media. ‘It’s still going on: [Hollywood] is still run by accountants, unfortunately, and one can’t help but be aware of how powerful heads of media corporations are. I’m astonished Silvio Berlusconi was able to operate as a politician while running the most powerful media operation in Italy, and managed to run the two in probably quite a questionable way.’

The abuse of power, Dance says, reminds him of ‘the whole unfortunate business with Harvey Weinstein and the things that came out about him. But it’s always been there, in our business, it’s just that the lid has come off it recently.’

For Your Eyes Only, 1981 - shutterstock
For Your Eyes Only, 1981 - shutterstock

Despite Oldman leading the cast, Mank is an ensemble piece. Amanda Seyfried plays Hearst’s mistress, actor Marion Davies, Lily Collins is Mank’s secretary, and Tuppence Middleton his wife, among many others.

Fincher runs a famously tight ship. ‘He does indeed,’ Dance says. Most scenes in the film were shot dozens of times, and one – a long, woozy dinner scene at which a drunk Mank makes a heck of a spectacle – went to more than 40.

‘It was very hard work for Gary, because wherever David was shooting, it was either on Gary or a reaction from one of us – so Gary, rightly but also generously, was just firing on all 12 cylinders [every take].’

At 74, scenes like that can be knackering, Dance says. I bet he was just glad to be seated. He laughs. ‘Yeah, I was… But I just like working, and a film set is a place buzzing, that energy is infectious.’

White Mischief, 1987 -  Alamy Stock Photo
White Mischief, 1987 - Alamy Stock Photo

The buzz of a studio lot aside, I speak for the Western world when I tell Dance I am curious about the source of his energy, specifically how he can still command lustful tabloid spreads dedicated to his strapping torso. Apparently it’s all down to his fitness routine.

‘It hasn’t been much very lately, other than a 6km walk on Hampstead Heath each morning. My obsession is swimming. For the last five or six years I’ve tried to swim [in the lido on the Heath] every morning, whatever weather. One year I did mid-March to November, that was my limit, then it becomes more medicinal than pleasurable.’

The lido, he says, ‘is a great place to think, once your body is used to the cold. Then you get up, have a full cardiac-arrest breakfast, and you’re fit for the day. I can recommend it.’

He used to run, but the knees are shot, and he likes to cycle, but a stiff neck makes that dicey, so it’s ‘swimming, vigorous walking, and chucking a few weights around’.

‘I’m lucky to have a fast metabolism and a slow pulse rate, which is a kind of ideal combination, but I actually find it terribly boring, the whole business. I don’t go to a gym – you get all that gym talk, surrounded by people in Lycra and with buff gym bodies. I am just in reasonably good shape for a man of my age.’

Cycling in London in 2019  - NASH / BACKGRID
Cycling in London in 2019 - NASH / BACKGRID

He started smoking – ‘Park Drive Tipped, they were, terrible things…’ – behind the vestry as an 11-year-old choir boy, but gave up in recent years. Weight-wise, he feels he has a couple of kilos to shed.

‘It’s going in all the wrong places.’ He prods at the sides of his plaid shirt with suspicion. ‘You get something called “love handles”, which are not nice. Either I go on a very strict diet, or I have to change my swimming apparel.’

This is not the first time Dance’s looks have been scrutinised quite so closely, of course. In the late 1980s, flush from a string of romantic roles, including as Guy Perron in British Raj series The Jewel in the Crown, he was repeatedly compared to Robert Redford (‘Not very fair to Robert Redford…’) and branded ‘the thinking woman’s crumpet’ by just about all who wrote about him.

‘I can remember the first time somebody called me that,’ he says. ‘Shortly afterwards, I was in Cannes, walking along the Croisette, and coming towards me was Joan Bakewell, who was known as “the thinking man’s crumpet”. As we met, we both said, “Hello, crumpet…”’ A rasp. ‘Thankfully that’s passed. Clever journalists would come up with something else.’

The Jewel in the Crown, 1984 - Alamy
The Jewel in the Crown, 1984 - Alamy

Born in the Midlands but raised in Plymouth, Dance’s mother, Nell, was a cook who worked all her life, while his father, Walter, was an electrical engineer who’d fought in the second Boer war. He grew up with a brother 10 years his senior, Michael. Walter died when Dance was four, after which Nell remarried, to Edward, a civil servant, who became the boys’ stepfather.

For most of his life, Dance had been under the impression that his father was in his 50s when he died. It wasn’t until he appeared on the BBC’s Who Do You Think You Are? in 2017 that he learned Walter was in fact in his mid-70s when he died, and had previously had another wife and children whose descendants now live in South Africa. Yet nobody on either side was theatrical.

‘One of the things I was given by this distant relative in South Africa was this medal for elocution that my father had got, and from the little I knew, he used to do recitations in the parlour, only in an amateur way.’

Dance worked as a labourer and plumber’s mate after studying at art school, where he had fostered an interest in acting. He then met two retired thespians in Plymouth, Leonard and Martin, who coached him in the classics, bullied an RP accent into him, and taught him all they knew in exchange for a couple of pints in the local. Praise was hard to come by.

With ex-wife Joanna Haythorn and their children in 2000 -  Alan Davidson/Shutterstock
With ex-wife Joanna Haythorn and their children in 2000 - Alan Davidson/Shutterstock

‘I can remember driving Leonard back from the pub, I thought I’d been pretty s—t hot working through Julius Caesar, and he got out of the car and said, “You don’t realise how bad you are, do you boy? See you next week!”’ Dance smiles at the memory. ‘It’s very important to know when you’re not being good.’

But he was good, good enough to soon join the Royal Shakespeare Company without having been to drama school. Not that it impressed his mother much. Though very loving, she remained defiantly nonplussed by news of her son’s glamorous career, to his amusement.

‘Bless her, she was quite proud I think, really. She was a bit of a martyr to the cause.’ I wonder if he ever thinks about what his father would make of his career. ‘Yeah. I would hope, like any child, that my parents would be pleased and proud. I think he’d quite like it.’

Dance has since become a parent himself. He married sculptor Joanna Haythorn in 1970, and had two children, Oliver, now 46, and Rebecca, now 40, before they divorced in 2004. He then had another daughter, nine-year-old Rose, in 2012 with his then-fiancée Eleanor Boorman, a former model 26 years his junior.

With daughter Rebecca in 2015 -  WireImage
With daughter Rebecca in 2015 - WireImage
With ex-fiancée Eleanor Boorman in 2011 -  AFP via Getty Images
With ex-fiancée Eleanor Boorman in 2011 - AFP via Getty Images

‘I think every child tries to do better than their parents did. My mother did teach me to be independent. How to look after yourself, basically,’ Dance says. ‘One thing my mother used to say, which I realise no parent ever should, is “Stop showing off”. You should never stop a child showing off. Show off more!’

So that’s how he’s tried to be. Oliver, who works in the film props industry, lives nearby, while Rebecca lives in Somerset. Is it different, parenting again in a younger generation?

‘Different in as much as we live in a different place. My contribution is co-parenting, because we’re not together, and so it’s different in that respect. But [Rose] is a fantastic little girl, like my grown-up daughter was, and my grown-up son. I do like children, I think they’re very special.’ Boorman and Rose live ‘200 miles away’, so the homeschooling responsibility ‘has been down to her mother. But we FaceTime on a pretty regular basis.’

And he has a granddaughter. ‘I do indeed. She’s about six months younger than my daughter. I think they think they’re like cousins.’ He throws his hands up and flaps them away. ‘It’s all rather complicated but it doesn’t really matter at all, whatever their “titles” are.’

Would he consider marrying again? ‘N-no,’ he says, after a split-second’s thought.

Meryl Streep and Charles Dance in Plenty, 1985 - Alamy Stock Photo
Meryl Streep and Charles Dance in Plenty, 1985 - Alamy Stock Photo

Curiously, much of Dance’s success has come in the period since he became a bachelor. He trained at the RSC during the ’70s, before moving into television and film, finding acclaim in both, not least in the ’80s, when the success of For Your Eyes Only and The Jewel in the Crown led to starring opposite Meryl Streep in Plenty and Greta Scaachi in White Mischief.

But his is a career that has strengthened as it has matured. The noughties brought Robert Altman film Gosford Park and the BBC adaptation of Bleak House, while the last decade has seen him gain a small screen Midas touch, instantly enhancing the class and quality of anything he appears in, to the extent that his name now looks unfinished without a ‘Sir’ before it.

‘It’s swings and roundabouts in this business; I’m sure that Game of Thrones had something to do with it. To get offered a plum part in the most successful television series to date…’

That show has made him instantly recognisable to an entirely new generation. ‘I’m amazed. I can be sitting in a car, at night, in the rain, at traffic lights, and somebody on the other side of the road points and says, “Hello Charlie, you all right?”’

Gosford Park, 2002 - Alamy
Gosford Park, 2002 - Alamy
Bleak House, 2005
Bleak House, 2005

A word of warning, mind: don’t approach him for a selfie. ‘No, hate it. I try to decline as graciously as I can, but I’d rather not. Most people accept it, but some say, “Oh, really?” As if it’s obligatory! Which it’s not.’

Unfortunately, none of the recent roles have been very permanent: Dance has a habit of dying, or being killed, and he’s noticed. ‘I’ve died in almost everything I’ve done over the last few years,’ he says, cheerfully.

One of those deaths belonged to Mountbatten in The Crown, who we saw being assassinated by the IRA off the coast of County Sligo in the last series. Originally there was talk of Dance playing the Duke of Edinburgh, chiefly due to a physical resemblance growing by the day.

‘I would have had to wait until the season being shot now, because Tobias Menzies was there being rather wonderful. Anyway, I was asked to do Mountbatten and thought, “Oh, let’s do that instead.” Another wig, few more uniforms…’

So where will Dance pop up next? There’s a part as General Kitchener in Matthew Vaughn’s The King’s Man, a Netflix adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s comic The Sandman, he’s just finished Against the Ice, a film about the 1909 expedition to dispute the US claim on Greenland, in which he’ll co-star with Game of Thrones’ Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and Peaky Blinders’ Joe Cole.

Game of Thrones, 2011-2015 -  Alamy Stock Photo
Game of Thrones, 2011-2015 - Alamy Stock Photo

Theatre seems to be one place we won’t see him. I mention that Sir Ian McKellen, his old RSC mucker, is to play Hamlet at the age of at least 81, in an age-blind show. ‘Is he really?’ Dance says, with what may or may not be a roll of the eyes. ‘I wonder who’s playing his mother…’

Not for you, then?

‘Not the parts that are traditionally for younger people. Other than for an intellectual exercise, I don’t really see the point of that,’ he says.

‘I have this odd feeling about theatre. There are nights when I pray there’s going to be a bomb scare, an announcement – “Ladies and gentlemen, you must leave the theatre!” – and the show is cancelled,’ he continues. ‘And then there are nights that are fantastic and it goes well and that’s great, you get this applause and your ego has been boosted. But if I’m honest I prefer to be on a film set.’

So that’s where he’ll be, especially once the pandemic’s over. I assume he’s vaccinated? ‘No,’ Dance says, insouciantly, ‘I’ve had my invitation, but I went to Iceland to film in January, got tested every day, came back, went to Waitrose, woke up the next morning feeling s­—t, so did Alessandra, then we were positive. So we isolated for a couple of weeks, and now I think I’ll go and get jabbed.’

The Crown, 2019-2020 -  Courtesy of Des Willie / Netflix
The Crown, 2019-2020 - Courtesy of Des Willie / Netflix

Never has a man sounded so casual about catching a deadly disease at 74. But it’s difficult to imagine Dance riled at all. In fact, the only time he comes close is a rant about the proposed easing of the lockdown restrictions, specifically that there is a date set ‘for opening the discotheques. This is the worst place. Where else is the virus going to flourish? A crowded discotheque filled with hot, sweaty people!’

Charles Dance doesn’t dance, I discover. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever been clubbing, actually – you spend the whole time not being able to hear what somebody’s saying. I hate dancing, because I’m no good at it,’ he huffs. ‘I bet you’re a secretive clubber, aren’t you?’

So, it’s restaurants with old friends he misses, otherwise he’ll be on set. He holds Sir John Gielgud, with whom he used to share an agent, as a role model. ‘He used to ring up and say, “Hello, Johnny Gielgud here, got any work?” In his 90s! That’s what I’d like to do.’

You can bet he will, too. That gives Dance another 20 years, at least. There must be some ambitions left? ‘Just keep working,’ he replies, with reflexive modesty. Then he leans forward, narrows his eyes and steeples his fingers. ‘I would like to front more stuff,’ he decides, finally. ‘I’m forever being asked to come in and play telling cameos…’

And why not? He’s only just become Charles f­—king Dance.

Mank is available now on Netflix