Walter Charles Dance (born 10 October 1946) is an English actor. He is known for playing strict, authoritarian characters and villains. Dance started his career on stage with the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) before appearing in film and television. For his services to drama he was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) by Queen Elizabeth II in 2006. He made his feature film debut in the James Bond film For Your Eyes Only (1981). He since acted in a string of critically acclaimed period films such as Michael Collins (1996), Gosford Park (2001), The Imitation Game (2014), Mank (2020), and The King's Man (2021). He has also appeared in the films The Golden Child (1986), Alien 3 (1992), Last Action Hero (1993), Dracula Untold (2014), and Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019). He made his directorial film debut with the drama film Ladies in Lavender (2004), which he also wrote and executive produced. On television, Dance played Guy Perron in The Jewel in the Crown (1984), Mr Tulkinghorn in Bleak House (2005), Tywin Lannister in Game of Thrones (2011–2015), and Lord Mountbatten in the third and fourth seasons of The Crown (2019–2020). For his role in The Crown, he was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series.

Early life

Walter Charles Dance was born in Redditch, Worcestershire, on 10 October 1946, the younger son of Eleanor Marion ( Perks; 1911–1984), a cook, and Walter Dance (1874–1949), an electrical engineer who served as a sergeant in the 2nd Regular Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers during the Second Boer War (having previously served in the 2nd Volunteer Battalion) and who was in his 70s when his younger son was born. By his father's previous marriage, Dance had two older half-sisters, Norah (1898–1993) and Mary (1903–1908). On his maternal side, he also has an elder half-brother, Michael (born 1936). During filming of an episode for the genealogical series Who Do You Think You Are? in 2016, Dance discovered that his mother had Belgian ancestry, which traced back to the city of Spa. His immigrant ancestor Charles François Futvoye (1777–1847) had been a pioneer in the art of japanning during the early half of the 19th century. Growing up in Plymouth, Dance attended the now-defunct Widey Technical School for Boys (then known as Widey High School) in Crownhill. He later attended Arts University Plymouth and Leicester College of Arts (now known as De Montfort University), where he studied graphic design and photography.

Career

Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC)

Dance was a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company during the mid-to-late 1970s and was in many of their productions in London and Stratford-upon-Avon. Later he returned to the RSC to take the title role in Coriolanus at Stratford-upon-Avon and Newcastle in 1989, and at the Barbican Theatre in 1990. He received rave reviews and a Critics' Circle Best Actor award for his performance as C. S. Lewis in William Nicholson's Shadowlands, in the 2007 stage revival.

Television and film

Dance made his screen debut in 1974, in the ITV series Father Brown as Commandant Neil O'Brien in "The Secret Garden". Other small parts followed, including a 1983 cameo as a South African assassin in The Professionals, but his big break came the following year when he played Guy Perron in The Jewel in the Crown (Granada Television, Christopher Morahan 1984), an adaptation of Paul Scott's novels that also made stars of Geraldine James and Art Malik. Dance made one of his earliest big-screen appearances in the 1981 James Bond film For Your Eyes Only as evil henchman Claus. Though he turned down the opportunity to screen test for the James Bond role, in 1989 he played Bond creator Ian Fleming in Anglia Television's dramatised biography directed by Don Boyd, Goldeneye (the name of Fleming's estate in Jamaica and a title later used for a James Bond film). He has also starred in many other British television dramas such as Edward the Seventh (as Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence and Avondale, Edward VII's oldest son, and heir to the throne), Murder Rooms, Randall and Hopkirk, Rebecca, The Phantom of the Opera, Fingersmith and Bleak House (for which he received an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie). He was name-checked in the British comedy series Absolutely Fabulous, as being slated to play the title character in The Life of Jesus Christ 2, which was filming in Morocco at the same time as the main characters of the series were there for a photo shoot. He also played Guy Spencer, the pro-Hitler propagandist, in the second instalment of Foyle's War, and had an ongoing role as Dr. Maltravers in the ITV drama Trinity. Dance made a guest appearance on the BBC drama series Merlin as the Witchfinder Aredian, and as a vainglorious version of himself in the third series of Jam & Jerusalem. He played Lord Vetinari in the 2010 Sky adaptation of Terry Pratchett's Going Postal, and the Russian oligarch Aleksandr Borinski in Paris Connections. He played the role of Tywin Lannister in HBO's Game of Thrones, based on the A Song of Ice and Fire novels by George R. R. Martin. Dance was wooed for the role by the producers while filming Your Highness in Belfast. Dance also played Conrad Knox on the British television series Strike Back: Vengeance as the primary villain in the series. Since 2012, Dance has had a recurring role in The Big Fat Quiz of the Year reading excerpts from books, such as Fifty Shades of Grey or the autobiographies of English media personalities, in a deadpan manner. On 30 June 2013, Dance appeared with other celebrities in an episode of the BBC's Top Gear as a "Star in a Reasonably Priced Car" for the debut of the Vauxhall Astra. In summer 2018, Dance narrated a documentary entitled Spitfire, which featured the legendary Supermarine Spitfire and recounted the efforts of the RAF pilots who flew them during the Second World War. In 2019, he played an antagonist in Godzilla: King of the Monsters and appeared as Lord Mountbatten in series 3 of The Crown in the same year. In 2020, Dance portrayed William Randolph Hearst in David Fincher's Mank, co-starring alongside Gary Oldman and Amanda Seyfried. In January 2021, Dance was cast in the Netflix adaptation of The Sandman.

Screenwriting and directing

Dance's debut film as a screenwriter and director was Ladies in Lavender (2004), which starred Judi Dench and Maggie Smith. In 2009, he directed his own adaptation of Alice Thomas Ellis's The Inn at the Edge of the World.

Personal life

Dance lives in North London. He married Joanna Haythorn in 1970, and they had a son named Oliver (born 1974) and a daughter named Rebecca (born 1980) before divorcing in 2004. He later dated Eleanor Boorman from 2008 to 2012, and they had a daughter named Rose (born 2012). He is in a relationship with Italian production manager and former actress Alessandra Masi, whom he met in Italy in 2018.

Political views

Dance has described his political views as "very left-of-centre" and "a bit left of centre-left". He supported the UK remaining in the European Union in the run-up to the 2016 EU referendum, and expressed his wish for the country to be closer to Europe to avoid "being a little satellite of America". In a 2020 interview with the Financial Times, he felt NHS workers were not being offered a decent enough pay rise and called Boris Johnson a "bumbling buffoon". In light of the Israel–Hamas war, Dance was one of over two thousand to sign an Artists for Palestine letter calling for a ceasefire and accusing western governments of "not only tolerating war crimes but aiding and abetting them." Dance contributed to a video published by the Palestine Festival of Literature in support of South Africa's legal motion accusing Israel of genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

Honours

Dance was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) on 17 June 2006.

Acting credits

Film

Television

Video games

Audiobooks

Podcasts

Stage

Awards and nominations