Charles Dance's Real Name: Charles Dance

Quick answer: Charles Dance is known professionally and in published interviews as Charles Dance. Encyclopedia.com dates his birth to October 10, 1946, in Rednal, England, while noting that some sources cite Redditch, Birmingham, or Plymouth. The Guardian says he was born in Worcestershire (Encyclopedia.com; The Guardian).

Real name and early life

The sources used here do not independently document a longer legal form. Encyclopedia.com names his parents as Walter, an engineer, and Eleanor (Perks) Dance, a cook. The Guardian says his father died when he was three and a half, that his mother had been a servant at 13 and came from Bethnal Green, and that he attended a technical grammar school oriented toward the Plymouth dockyards, leaving with two O-levels, in English and art. He later developed a stammer that, he told the paper, kept him off the stage as a teenager. Encyclopedia.com records study at the Plymouth College of Art and a graphic-design diploma from Leicester College of Art, followed by private acting study.

Career highlights

Encyclopedia.com and the Guardian both place him with the Royal Shakespeare Company from about 1975; the Guardian says he stayed five years and toured in Europe and the United States. His screen breakthrough was Sergeant Guy Perron in the 1984 television adaptation of The Jewel in the Crown, a role Encyclopedia.com links to later BAFTA recognition and that the Guardian calls the part that made him a household name. Film credits listed by Encyclopedia.com include For Your Eyes Only (1981), Plenty (1985), White Mischief (1987), Alien 3 (1992), and the ensemble of Gosford Park (2001). The Guardian also cites later work in The Crown and as Tywin Lannister in HBO's Game of Thrones, beginning in 2011, and the 2023 series Rabbit Hole, with Kiefer Sutherland. Asked about a mid-1980s approach over succeeding Roger Moore as James Bond, he told the Guardian he did not audition after his agent advised him not to try.

Name notes for searchers

Charles Dance is the name used in interviews and credits. Searchers looking for Tywin Lannister in Game of Thrones, or for Sergeant Guy Perron in The Jewel in the Crown, are usually aiming at the same person.