Keep it Comin', Charles Dance!

I cannot possibly be alone in wanting to hear more of this guy.

If you watch a lot of live-action TV, you probably recognize Charles Dance most as the fearsome Tywin Lannister from Game of Thrones. Before seeing that, my mom recognized him from the movie, The Golden Child, in which he starred opposite Eddie Murphy.

Tywin Lannister from Game of Thrones

As Lord Tywin, Dance brought a powerful and intimidating performance that all but earned the Lannister sigil of a golden lion. It didn't at all hurt that in addition to being fairly tall and in impressive shape for a man his age, Dance also had an intimidating voice. Fittingly, I always thought that Dance managed to make the Lord of Casterly Rock, Lord Paramount of the Westerlands and Warden of the West both look and sound like a lion in human form - answering to no one, having it be his way or the highway, facing all with a piercing stare, and silencing with a furious roar anyone who stood in his way.

On a side note, I've often said that the best villains are the ones who make being evil look like fun. And just like Darth Vader from Star Wars, Loki from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and Sephiroth from Final Fantasy VII, Dance definitely fits that mold. At just about any point in Thrones, Lord Tywin was just about the only person in the room that nobody wanted to mess with. And who wouldn't want to be in that position?

I have admittedly not seen many of Dance's other roles, but a few episodes of Thrones was all it took for me to do even just a cursory Wikipedia search and seek out more of his work. However, based on what I have seen, even if you discount voice roles, I would say that Dance is sorely underutilized. While he is a definite plus in just about anything he's in, I'd say that his part on Thrones was the one that made the best use of his talents.

I had learned all of the above about Dance before learning that he has, in fact, done some voice work before. He appeared in the video game, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt as the emperor of the Nilfgaardian Empire, Emhyr Var Emreis - Deithwen Addan yn Carn aep Morvudd (translated: Emhyr Var Emreis - The White Flame Dancing on the Barrows of his Enemies).

Emhyr Var Emreis from
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

As Emperor Emhyr, Dance brought much the same to the table as he did when playing Lord Tywin. The Emperor uses the same overall speech pattern, and speaks to those around him with authority and fierceness. Even the series protagonist Geralt of Rivia is not exempt from Emhyr's direct and demanding speech. I will grant you, I know most of this simply from watching YouTube videos, one of which you can find below. However, I will say that Dance's performance in those clips alone make me hold out hope that he will reprise this role when the time comes in the Witcher Netflix series. Dance said that this role was his first time voicing a character in a video game, and he was very excited to do it, calling it "A whole new world for [him]." It's not hard to imagine what a live-action performance of the character would look like with him as the actor.

Unfortunately, Dance has not done many other voice roles, either before or since Emperor Emhyr - at least, not many that were particularly recognizable. To date, he seems to have only done the voice of a character on Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 in terms of video game roles. Other than that, he did provide the narration for the audiobook version of Frederick Forsyth's novel, The Fourth Protocol, and the voice of Winston Churchill in the BBC documentary A History of Britain.

Much like Benedict Cumberbatch in my last Keep it Comin'! post, I think that Charles Dance could make a good actor for some sort of evil sorcerer in a Disney movie. I could also absolutely see him playing another figure like Tywin Lannister or Emhyr Var Emreis in such a movie. How about an incredibly stern mentor figure for the main character? Someone who wants the character to do well, but is not very forgiving of failure? There are also probably quite a few anime that could use a voice actor like him.

Whatever the case, I'd love to hear more from Dance in the future. A very talented man with an excellent voice.

If you would like to leave a like or comment on the featured video, visit the link below:

Voice Performance of Charles Dance in The Witcher 3

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is available for purchase on Amazon.com, Best Buy, and many other retailers, and can be played on PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch.