Golden Boy Makes Good

Ten years ago Charles Dance understudied Coriolanus for the Royal Shakespeare Company, but played the part just twice. He left to find fame as a television and film star. Now he is back at the RSC - this time to make the role his own.

A beautiful man is a joy to behold and Charles Dance seen through any lens is very beautiful indeed. The camera gives him sensitive cheek-bones and adds a golden sheen to his gingerish hair. There is a hint of manly shyness; you can believe that in certain circumstances he might even blush, and it is perhaps this that persuades women to write their fan letters by the sackful, as, once, another generation did for Dirk Bogarde.

This bright autumn afternoon, as he strides purposefully past the hordes of matinee-goers at Stratford, I am irresistibly reminded of a waspishly daft game which consists of compiling lists of men who suffer from PGL -- Pointless Good Looks. Charles Dance features regularly in such lists, as do Michael Heseltine, Robert Kilroy Silk, Anthony Andrews and a surprising number of pop stars, all with more than their fair share of admirers foolishly beguiled by smooth features.

In real life Charles Dance is more amiable than glamorous. He is impeccably friendly. He joshes the pretty girl in the theatre office and, in the curious etiquette of our time, he knows it is only polite to curse when her male colleague passes on good wishes from a friend: 'Bloody hack! Give him my love, mate.'

It is ten years since he was last at Stratford. He was an unknown then, grateful for the chance to be Alan Howard's understudy as Coriolanus. He was lucky enough to go on twice, but of course there were no reviews, no special attention. This time his Coriolanus is the star attraction. This time he regards Terry Hands, the director, as more of an equal, less of a guru. 'It's not that I have a lesser opinion of Terry but I have a slightly better opinion of my own ability.'

Indeed, it is a measure of Dance's considerable success that when Terry Hands rang him out of the blue to offer him the role of Coriolanus, even though he longed to play the part, the first thing he had to do after putting down the phone was work out the sums. Could he rejoin the RSC and still afford to pay the kind of bills that come with star status, the mega mortgage and his children's school fees? 'It will be seven months altogether -- it's financially crippling. That's why I went off and did a film of Phantom of the Opera [for a television mini-series]. One has to subsidise.'

Another difference at Stratford this time around is that there are two directors. John Barton, the Shakespeare scholar, has equal ranking with T. Hands who, coincidentally, has given notice of his intent to leave the company in 1991. Shared direction might sound like a recipe for disaster, but Dance says not. 'The two directors complement each other. It's rather like having two chairmen in a long-running debate.'

All are agreed that his Coriolanus will be a thug. 'He pours out insults, one on top of the other. One thinks, God, he's brutal. He is an athletic soldier who sees situations in simplistic terms; he speaks unpalatable truths.'

It is often an actor's way to relate everything in their own lives to the characters they happen to be playing. Dance arrived at Stratford long after the company was established as a team. He felt slightly the outsider. He was thrilled. 'I can use that in building up my Coriolanus. Coriolanus was an outsider.' Coriolanus was also fit. 'So I jog, every morning -- pound, pound, pound -- very boring; but I tell myself I can use this. Coriolanus is the supreme achiever; he has to be best at what he does. So I have to run as well as I possibly can. I go to the gym and I have to do that as well as I possibly can. I don't want people to notice that I'm trying hard; I don't want them to pat me on the back for it. Coriolanus hated people to be pleased with him."

He is boundlessly ambitious. He says his role model is John Gielgud because he is still working 'bloody brilliantly' at 85. Dance, at 43, says that in these terms his career has barely begun.

His mother, who was widowed young, was in service for most of Dance's childhood and was so poor that she used to sigh over separate tins for bills. He thinks now he was lucky to have attended the kind of state schools which did not attempt Shakespeare. 'I must have been 21 before I read my first line of Shakespeare. I came to it in a very fresh way.'

His real education was conducted in a pub by two ex-actors who tutored him for beer money. They got him a job as a dresser for Fiddler on the Roof. Years of bit parts followed.

Then, with singular bravura, he engineered his first big break himself. He had been offered a very small part in Jewel in the Crown but when he read the script he knew immediately that what he really wanted was to play the role of Guy Perron, 'the meatiest part, certainly the best part for me'. It was not easy persuading the directors. 'Nobody knew me. They made me read them every single scene before they were convinced. I was very determined to get my way. When I want something badly I can be like a ferret with a rabbit.' Geraldine James, who played Perron’s girlfriend in Jewel in the Crown, says fondly, ‘I found Charlie very shy but he could be brilliantly funny. He's more confident now than he was.’

Since that series was shot he has made nine films, notably Plenty with Meryl Streep, White Mischief and Pascali's Island. He was cast as D.W. Griffith in Good Morning Babylon and, earlier this year, played Ian Fleming in the television film Goldeneye. He has a passion for filming -- not just for the work and the people, but even for the crazy logistics. 'I love the whole business of going off on location -- it used to be for ten weeks but now times are hard and it's just five or six weeks. You become a sort of family. You get up at 5.30, maybe 6 in the morning and you work 14 hours a day. You drive through the work and then two or three months later you all meet up for the cast and crew screening and there it is -- there's that piece of work everybody sweated blood for.'

There were no new films on the horizon when he started rehearsals for Coriolanus -- but, who knows, perhaps somebody will grant his wish to portray on the screen the writer Bruce Chatwin, who died tragically early this year. And one day he wants to launch his own film unit. He is nursing a secret scheme to film the work of a writer 'famous between the wars', whom he considers is due to be rediscovered.

His writing is another secret. 'It's something I don't care to talk about. I don't write to show my work to anybody else.' Such inhibitions do not hamper him when it comes to improving other people's screenplays. He says that returning to Stratford was 'of course, for the part and for working with Terry, but also for the blessed relief of doing a piece of work where I don't have to try to improve words that cannot be improved, namely Shakespeare.

'In the film industry a great deal of energy is expended trying to improve the script. There are so many writers around who produce pigs' ears; it's their own bloody fault if people like me need to wade in. There is a great deal of garbage foisted on the cinema-going public.’

His words sound confident enough but he is a closet worrier. He worries, not just about money and contracts and his reputation; he worries enough to be able to quote precisely the slightly caustic words uttered by a tabloid journalist who implied that his very worrying was self-indulgent. Then he worries that you might believe the words of another journalist to the effect that he was supposed to have been paid $1 million for Phantom of the Opera. 'I wish I had been. They certainly couldn't afford to pay me that after what they paid Burt Lancaster.' Understandably enough for an actor, he worries about how he is perceived. 'There's something about me -- the last few things I've done have been solitary characters. I tend to be solitary but at the same time I don't particularly enjoy time spent on my own. I'm not good at being alone.'

He has been married for nearly 20 years to Joanna, a fine arts student he met in his hometown, Plymouth. They live in a house he prefers to identify merely as in 'the West Country' with their two children, Oliver, 15, who is at a boarding school nearby, and [Rebecca], who is ten and attends a day school. He says he is happily married -- and embraces the wooden desk in front of him. 'Long may my wife continue to be happy,' he says -- sounding sweeter than these words read in cold print. 'She's mother, wife, friend, looker-after of ducks, geese, dogs, and occasionally finds the time and inspiration to paint. She's not the sort of woman who tries to make a bit of money painting people's children or dogs. She's got real talent.'

His fame is no help to family life. You may think it pernickety of him to locate his house only loosely as somewhere in the West Country, until you hear that, when the family lived in Hampstead, people would stand and peer through their front windows, beckoning friends and passers-by to set eyes on Charles Dance, famous actor, at home. 'We had to resort to net curtains, which I hate. I have to have light.' Now that he has moved, he is protected by his own 5½ acres, and on his visits home he does what he calls 'macho stuff like chopping trees'.

For years now his outings with his children have been fraught. 'The children don't like attention and nor should they. If we go out we're never on our own. Well, of course not. One's aware that there are people all around saying "Oh that's what his son's like," or, "That must be the daughter."'

He is careful to add that he would be sadder to be ignored, and when he is feeling particularly paranoid he can assuage his fears with another session of acupuncture or attack them by working out for an hour in the gym. He is not overtly vain, and perhaps because he is not constantly aware of his own appearance himself, somehow his looks diminish. As he chats on, a likeable well-meaning Dad in middle age, it is difficult to remember what all the fuss is about.

Then he demonstrates. 'This is what it's like slumped in your actor's chair on a film set. For five hours. Six hours at a time.' (He slumps.) 'Then I'm expected to come up with the goods.’ And as he utters these prosaic words, he snaps to life. In a split second the glum little room at the back of the theatre is alive with his sudden energy. His turquoise eyes glitter: he dazzles. 'I perform. That's what it's all about.’

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