Article from the Los Angeles Daily News TV Book, March 18-24, 1990

LONDON -- "It doesn't bother me that no one will see my face," insisted Charles Dance, whose rugged good looks caught the attention of audiences hooked on the British miniseries The Jewel in the Crown five years ago. "Masks are fascinating things. We all wear masks anyway most of the time."

Playing the title role in NBC's four-hour miniseries The Phantom of the Opera, to be broadcast Sunday and Monday, Dance works almost entirely incognito. He sees the plaster of paris mask covering most of his face as an acting challenge.

"If you can only see a person's eyes and mouth, you listen to what they say and the way they say it and (watch) how they move their body," he said.

"It's not easy. But, to me," he continued in his English accent, "every job is difficult. In this case, I can't fall back on what I look like. I'm having to play someone who's socially outcast and consumed with unrequited love, yet I must retain honesty and integrity."

Furthermore, Dance had only eight days to prepare, not the ideal situation for an actor accustomed to weeks of rehearsal time with Britain's Royal Shakespeare Company. But he could not resist working with Phantom director Tony Richardson, who won an Oscar for Tom Jones.

Nor could he turn down the opportunity to star with Burt Lancaster, Teri Polo and Ian Richardson in what he describes as a "rattling good story."

Gaston Leroux's classic novel, The Phantom of the Opera, tells the story of a figure with a deformed face who haunts the Paris Opera House hoping to win the heart of the only woman he has ever loved. It has inspired at least six films, one TV movie, and two musicals since it was published in 1911. Later this year, Andrew Lloyd Webber plans to turn his current musical, starring Michael Crawford, into yet another film. (Note: almost eight years on, and we're still waiting!)

Miniseries producer Ross Milloy rejects comparisons of his four-hour show with Lloyd Webber's.

"Our version is not a musical," he noted. "It's based on the original novel, and it traces the origin of the Phantom and gives him a mother and a father."

Added Dance, "Our Phantom is very much a love story, not a horror story, and it has the minimum of special effects."

Dance has appeared only once before in an American television production, playing one of Shirley MacLaine's lovers in Out on a Limb.

"I don't really like TV," he said. "It's an insatiable monster that has to be continuously fed. Most of the time, people are more concerned with quantity than quality. The danger is that if you work in TV, you get offered TV. And because there's so much of it, a lot is junk."

However, he does see the small screen as one avenue to his goal of becoming a film star in America. He already has tried the more normal route -- appearing in American films -- but without much success.

Meryl Streep chose him to play her milquetoast husband in Plenty, but the film flopped. A few years later, he turned villainous in The Golden Child, Eddie Murphy's critically panned box-office success.

"I don't think it affected my career at all," he said. "It just put money in the bank."

Since then, Dance has kept busy in England, starring in White Mischief, Hidden City and Pascali's Island.

"I love making films," he said. "I'd like to do good films that were also commercially successful. That way I'd give myself more clout in the industry. The difficulty in England is getting a continuity of work."

Despite his dislike of television, Dance has found himself working in various British productions in order to pay the bills.

"A lot of time here is spent making a silk purse out of a sow's ear," he complained. "That's why I decided to take six months off and go back to the greatest writer in the world -- William Shakespeare. Nobody will be rewriting the script."

After 10 years away from the Bard, Dance is starring in a Royal Shakespeare Company production of Coriolanus at Stratford-upon-Avon and London.