Charles Dance: The man behind the Phantom's mask |
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The cafés are full of lovers basking in the sun, but in the labyrinth beneath the Paris Opera House, the atmosphere is unchanging, Gothic gloom. A phantom is afoot: the hideous music-mad recluse who has haunted impressionable minds since Gaston Leroux wrote the novel "The Phantom of the Opera" in 1911.
Its gaudy history from Lon Chaney's 1925 silent film through the current Andrew Lloyd Webber megamusical establishes this romantic horror tale as a show-business classic. Now NBC's "Phantom of the Opera", airing March 18 and 19 from 9 to 11 P.M. (ET), adds another chapter to the madman's saga. Who is the man behind the mask this time? |
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Tall and aloof in spectral wear, he stalks through a crowd of extras. He stops to exchange a joke with costar Teri Polo, who plays the soprano the Phantom loves and abducts. In spite of the masquerade, the civilized British tones identify him as Charles Dance, the dashing Sgt. Guy Perron from PBS's hit "The Jewel in the Crown". That same velvety accent helped earn him his snappy tabloidesque moniker, "The thinking woman's sex symbol".
"When a journalist comes out with a well-turned phrase like 'thinking woman's crumpet'," he remarks in a voice of weary irritation, "it tends, God help us, to stick." |
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It does -- when evidence supports the description. Elegantly muscled in a work shirt and faded jeans, his reddish blond hair no longer hidden by a wig, Dance has great looks and physical charisma -- but he's not just another dumb blond. Sex symbols of whatever variety tend to be a rather one-dimensional bunch, but Dance, unmasked after the day's shoot, displays an independent, complex personality. "I suppose I could be put into a section of a file reading Romantic English Leading Man," he observes ruefully. "Trouble is, in the film world, you tend to remain what you seem to be."
Is that what he's doing, then, in this ghoulish role: defying the stereotype? "No, it's a great classic part I would want to play in any case: a man born with a grotesque deformity -- a musical genius who spends his whole life hiding, living underground. The story has everything: horror, unrequited love, great music." |
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Dance, who spent 10 years in the theater, several of them with the Royal Shakespeare Company, prepared for the role of the Phantom by reading Leroux and listening to Gounod's "Faust" for a duet scene with Polo. He consciously avoided the hit musical so as not to be influenced by another interpretation of the story. It is typical of Dance's sense of craft that for a scene in which the Phantom plays the flute, an activity which another actor might simply have faked, he learned correct flute handling.
To approach the character, he drew on memories of being isolated, unloved. "Over the years," he says, "we all develop a catalog of emotions -- if you dig deep you can find them." A middle-class childhood in Devon, England, provided some material. At 4 years old, he lost his father in an accident, and was raised by his mother and a stepfather, who remained emotionally distant. Like many future actors, he was a natural ham -- "My mother made the mistake of telling me many times to stop showing off: the worst thing a parent can tell a child." In his late teens a pair of eccentric retired actors who ran a pub coached him when the customers went home. After absorbing the wisdom of "my two strange old men," he passed through the varied circles of repertory theater, moving upward on the strength of well-husbanded talent. The roles that established his popular image came from his non-theatrical work. In White Mischief he played a member of the bed-hopping colonial set in 1940s Kenya; in Plenty he was Meryl Streep's diplomat husband. Dance isn't seriously worried about being typecast. Like some actresses who gain fame on the strength of a romantic image, though, he seeks to display his versatility by portraying tortured characters. Before "Phantom" he completed "Goldeneye", a syndicated TV film version of the alcohol-and-intrigue-ridden life of Ian Fleming set for May. He's currently back with the RSC in Shakespeare's grisly "Coriolanus". Possible other roles might be equally challenging. "There's a novel called 'Hiroshima Joe': the main character is an alcoholic, opium-addicted homosexual. It's like "The Phantom", a bit far from my usual film image. But, that's all to the good." He gives a fiendish chuckle. "I'm not fond of easy definitions." © 1990 Andrea Lee for The Daily News TV Guide |