Charles Dance Quotes
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If I talk about Charles Dance I am talking about something else, something I operate and wind up and have to make an impression with and use to transmit someone else's screenplay.
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I like to be busy. I once shared an agent with the late Sir John Gielgud, who, at 96, was apparently still ringing up, saying, 'Hello, Gielgud here, any work?' Good on him. We've got to keep working. If we retire, there'll be nobody to play the old wrinklies, and that would be a dreadful shame.
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We have to take risks in British television. It has to stop playing to the lowest common denominator and patronising people.
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If you get a bad script, then you start expending energy trying to make a silk purse of a sow's ear. When the script's as good as those on 'Game of Thrones,' say, I don't think there was a single occasion where any of us thought there was a bad scene.
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My mother was a waitress in a Lyons Corner House, but she married up. She was keen on bettering herself. She taught me how to use the right knives and forks and behave properly.
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When you have a label stuck on you, people tend to believe it. If someone calls you suave and debonair, you only get offered parts in a suit and a collar and tie. It just so happens I wear them reasonably well.
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The quality of writing attracts me to films, also who the other actors are, who the director is, where it's being shot. Any or all of those things. But if the writing is really appalling, then the money had better be really good. Sometimes you say yes to something you wouldn't always do because you need the money.
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I phoned this number and said, Please, sir, I want to be an actor.
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A car to pick me up every day, a chair with my name on it, everybody being very polite... what can you do except sit back and watch it all, try to take it all in?
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Politics is the most corrupt profession on Earth, no matter where you are.
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My face lends itself to austere characters, and unless they're two-dimensional, I will do them. Any actor will tell you that an interesting villain is much more interesting to play.
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A handful of older, romantic leading men, like Sean Connery, Jack Nicholson, and Robert Redford are still landing parts.
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I had a stammer through adolescence. Any fun I'd had performing in school plays disappeared and only came back at 18, when the stammer started to go. Then I thought: 'Well, perhaps I can show off now.'
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I don't like watching television too much; it tires me out for some reason. But I saw a fair bit of 'Game of Thrones' because it was so good. I mostly watched episodes that I wasn't in.
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I've never been one for late nights, which is why I have always preferred making films to theatre. A play takes over your life: you start to feel sick at lunchtime, and by mid-afternoon, you're wishing for a bomb scare so the whole thing will be called off. Of course, if the evening goes well and you get the applause, then it's wonderful.
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I like approbation. Any actor who tells you they don't is lying.
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People think I have the benefit of a public school education. I have this suave and debonair label, but really, I'm as common as muck.
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You have to attempt to be objective about yourself.
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I love the Restoration. It's a bit like coming out of the John Major era into the optimism of Tony Blair.
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If I was to put a little flag in everywhere I've been in the world, there'd be a lot of little flags.
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I was a window dresser for Burton's once. What really put me off was the area manager coming round and saying, Charles, I think you're a natch at this.
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I like to keep up with London theatre, but it is a question of time.
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Most feature films are 35-40 shooting days.
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Audiences seem to have a limitless appetite for vampires and for fantasy in general. Unlike many other British actors, I haven't been building up my pension appearing in films like 'The Lord of the Rings' and 'Harry Potter,' but fantasy has now got a grip on me. I am also appearing in 'Game of Thrones' as the head of the House of Lannister.