Charles dance movies

Charles Dance is a conundrum. Like many actors blessed with matinee idol looks, but cursed by not living in a matinee idol time, he seems to have gone out of his way to escape typecasting as a romantic leading man, seeking instead more interesting roles.

He first came to the notice of alert theatregoers in the 1970s - a tall, striking blond playing assorted lords in the background of various history plays for the Royal Shakespeare Company, as well as understudying the company's leading man, Alan Howard.

Howard's shadow evidently loomed large over Dance, for 20 years later he returned to the RSC to play several of the older actor's most conspicuous successes, such as Coriolanus and John Halder in C.P. Taylor's Good.

Born Walter Charles Dance in Redditch, Worcestershire, on 10 October 1946, he was set for a career in graphic design until a meeting with two elderly actors led to private acting coaching, and he exchanged his regional lower-middle-class accent for the cultiv