Walter Charles Dance OBE (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.^[1]

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.

Walter Charles Dance was born in Redditch, Worcestershire, on 10 October 1946, the younger son of Eleanor Marion (née 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.^[2][3] By his father's previous marriage, Dance had two older half-sisters, Norah (1898–1993) and Mary (1903–1908).^[4] On his maternal side, he also has an elder half-brother, Michael (born 1936).^[5]

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.^[4] Growing up in Plymouth, Dance attended the now-defunct Widey Technical School for Boys (then known as Widey High School) in Crownhill.^[6] He later attended Arts University Plymouth and De Montfort University (then known as the Leicester College of Arts), where he studied graphic design and photography.^[7]

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.^[18][19] He later dated Eleanor Boorman from 2008 to 2012, and they had a daughter named Rose (born 2012).^[20]

Dance has described his political views as "very left-of-centre"^[21] 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".^[22] 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".^[23]

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."^[24] 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).^[25]

Dance was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) on 17 June 2006.^[26]