Charles Dance

Charles Dance OBE
Dance at the London Film and Comic Con, July 2012.
Born	Walter Charles Dance (1946-10-10) 10 October 1946 (age 70) Redditch, Worcestershire, England
Nationality	British
Education	Plymouth College of Art
Occupation	Actor, screenwriter, film director
Years active	1974–present
Spouse(s)	Joanna Haythorn (m. 1970; div. 2004)
Children	3

Walter Charles Dance, OBE (born 10 October 1946) is an English actor, screenwriter, and film director.

Dance typically plays assertive bureaucrats or villains. Some of his most high-profile roles are Tywin Lannister in HBO's Game of Thrones, Guy Perron in The Jewel in the Crown (1984), Sardo Numspa in The Golden Child (1986), Dr. Jonathan Clemens in Alien 3 (1992), Benedict in Last Action Hero (1993), the Master Vampire in Dracula Untold (2014), Lord Havelock Vetinari in Terry Pratchett's Going Postal (2010) and Alastair Denniston in The Imitation Game (2014).

Charles Dance was born in Redditch, Worcestershire, the son of Eleanor (née Perks), a cook, and Walter Dance, an engineer. Growing up in Plymouth, he attended Widey Technical School for Boys (it closed when known as Widey High School in 1988) in Crownhill.

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 the Oxford don C. S. Lewis in William Nicholson's Shadowlands, in the 2007 stage revival.