Curtain Call: Charles Dance

Today we are doing things just a bit differently. Rather than do the usual Curtain Call where any one of us varied Winter-Is-Coming writers eulogizes poetically about the actor in question (their character in memoriam), we’ve decided to let one of our readers hold the day. I give you thusly, Jared Kozal, Game of Thrones fan and Charles Dance enthusiast, ready and willing to say his peace. Jared inspired me with his thoughts in a previous Curtain Call, and I was moved to give him the platform to laud one of his favorites. Just so.

Here is Jared, for Charles:

We’re here to celebrate a great actor in Charles Dance, and the indelible character that he portrayed for four seasons on Game of Thrones: Tywin Lannister, Lord of Casterly Rock, Warden of the West, Hand of the King, and the true power in Westeros.

From the moment that the Game of Thrones television series was announced, Dance was a popular choice among fans for the role of Tywin Lannister. His casting was greeted with widespread acclaim from all corners, including this very website. The excitement was warranted, for Dance was already a well-known and extremely well-respected actor, as both his extensive résumé and anyone who had seen him on-screen previously could attest. Everyone assumed that he would do a marvelous job with a character as rich and complex as Tywin. But whatever expectations that we as audience members had for Charles Dance in this role, he exceeded them in spectacular fashion.

Acting is a craft that, at its peak, requires knowing how to employ silence and stillness every bit as much as speech and physicality. Dance is capable of smiling without allowing the light to reach his eyes, or conveying intense anger while barely moving a single muscle. He can imbue words with great meaning and menace by altering the timbre or inflection of his voice without ever raising the volume of his speech. Such restraint comes only with years of practice and a deep understanding of what the written material requires … and what it doesn’t. Dance scarcely needed to say a word to exert absolute command of any room that his character entered. When he did speak, however, he was spellbinding.

Showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss describe Dance, quite rightly, as a “phenomenon”. In an interview with EW discussing the Season 4 finale, they expressed gratitude for the immense privilege of writing for his character. “He brings such power and specificity to everything that he does”, they declared, marveling that Dance was “so good that the dialogue writes itself”.

To see what they mean, we simply need to look at Tywin’s lecture to Tommen in “Breaker of Chains”, wherein he educates his young grandson about what it means to be a good king. It’s a stunning piece of oratory, specifically crafted to showcase Dance’s immense talents. The speech does not appear in George R.R. Martin’s novels, but it feels – and it is – quintessentially Tywin Lannister.

Across four seasons, we almost never saw Tywin wield a sword (though as he demonstrated in his first appearance, he could wield a flaying knife with an efficacy that would put any Bolton to shame). But from his seat behind a desk in his sun-dappled office, Tywin commanded the Seven Kingdoms with a will as cold, sharp, and rare as Valyrian steel.

With a few strokes of his quill, he orchestrated the Red Wedding – the single most horrific and memorable act in the entire series – and vanquished the Starks. Dance excelled at embodying Tywin when he was at his most ruthless, but if anything, he was even stronger during his character’s quieter moments. Tywin’s interactions with Arya Stark at Harrenhal afforded us a glimpse of the man as he was behind closed doors, capable of something resembling warmth and admiration for the smart, cheeky young girl who, unbeknownst to him, was kin to his greatest enemy. Charles Dance’s chemistry with Maisie Williams in those scenes was terrific (it was truly a great idea on the part of Benioff and Weiss to pair those two together). The screen absolutely crackled as they bantered with one another and danced along the sharp edges of the truth.

So it was that Tywin confessed to Ned Stark’s daughter the nature of his own upbringing and how it had shaped him, as well as his hopes and plans for the future. “The War of Five Kings, they’re calling it,” he told Arya, as Dance allowed the barest hint of a smile to touch Tywin’s lips. “This is the one that I’ll be remembered for.”

Tywin ultimately did win the War of the Five Kings – something that he believed was crucial for his legacy. But the legacy we leave behind is not some static entity to be inscribed in ink or in blood and left undisturbed for our descendants to hold in reverence and fear. Legacy is a fluid concept, subject to interpretation, and authorial intent, while critical to our understanding of the work, can never tell the whole story. The only legacy that anyone can be certain of leaving in this world finds its roots within the people that they interact with along their journey, and in the relationships that they forge with them – or the lack thereof.

It was here that Tywin’s legacy would write its richest and most tragic chapter of all.

It’s no coincidence that the majority of Charles Dance’s most memorable and celebrated scenes on Game of Thrones were the ones that he shared with members of his on-screen family. There was Jaime, the erstwhile golden child who never wanted the responsibility of following in Tywin’s footsteps. There was Cersei, who craved her father’s recognition but burned with barely-suppressed rage at the ways in which he used her as a political pawn. And there was Tyrion, the son who could have been his father’s true heir if Tywin had been able to overcome his hatred for what he perceived to be his youngest son’s oldest and most unforgivable sin. Whenever Dance shared the screen with Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Lena Headey, Peter Dinklage, or Jack Gleeson, it was my cue to motion for silence and lean forward in my chair. It’s widely known that Charles Dance shared an immense professional and personal respect with the actors who played his children. Once the cameras started rolling, that understanding allowed them to tear into one another with a cold and vicious zeal. The results were truly breathtaking.

“Power resides where men believe it resides,” Varys once told Tywin’s youngest son, in one of the series’ most celebrated passages. “It’s a trick, a shadow on the wall. And a very small man can cast a very large shadow”. Tywin Lannister and Charles Dance are many things, but they are not, and have never been, small. The shadow that they cast over their respective domains was immense. There can be no doubt that Tywin’s death leaves a substantial vacuum at the heart of the realm. Dance’s departure from Game of Thrones leaves an equally daunting void for the show to fill as it begins a new chapter and looks toward an uncertain future, one in which the fate and legacy for its many of its surviving characters remains unwritten. This is not to say that Game of Thrones will fall to pieces in Dance’s absence. The show’s cast and crew are far too talented and committed for that, and there is still a great deal of story left to tell before winter finally comes. But there is no question that Charles Dance’s presence will be missed, both on set and on our screens.

As “The Children” drew to a close, the bells tolled for the fallen Hand, signaling the end of both his life and his long reign as the most powerful and feared man in the Seven Kingdoms. When the camera finally cut away from King’s Landing, the first image that we saw was that of clear skies and a powerful river, cascading over a precipice in the form of a beautiful waterfall. It was an image that seemed to promise us that all of the ink, blood, and pain that Tywin Lannister had inflicted upon the world in his single-minded pursuit of immortality was being washed away, leaving the ledger clean for a new generation to make its own mark, for better or for worse. But while water can cleanse like no other force on earth, giving life or taking it away, it does not remain still once it reaches the sea. It rises from the waves, invisible to the naked eye, to begin the cycle again. Most rivers get their start miles away from the sea in the mountains that tower above the landscape. The water that gives them life falls from dark clouds in the form of rain.

Ah, “The Rains of Castamere”, known far and wide as the more somber, murderous selection between the only two songs available at karaoke bars and brothels across the Seven Kingdoms, the other being that ribald ballad about a bear and his lovely maiden (sidebar: if any solitary giants or wives of dangerous Dornishman would like to lend us their voices next season in order to remedy this shortage, I would be immensely grateful). The song, commemorating a young Tywin Lannister’s merciless triumph over the hubristic House Reyne, was written long before Tywin’s two eldest children pushed Bran Stark from a window in order to conceal their illicit love, and it will continue to be sung long afterwards.

Tywin Lannister may be gone, but he left an indelible mark upon the world – if not the one that he truly hoped to leave. Once a river is unleashed, it follows its own course, and while it may not flow in the direction that we always wish that it would, it shapes the land wherever it goes. True power can’t always be quantified, but it can be felt, and deeply at that, if you step into its current and allow it to carry you away.

Fortunately, the legacy that Charles Dance leaves behind is far easier to measure. His performance as Tywin was, in my opinion, the greatest of his accomplished career. It stands among the most brilliant performances that Game of Thrones, stocked to the brim as it is with exceptional actors, has given us.

I’m happy to say that Dance’s legacy, already immensely distinguished, is far from complete. He has a long list of projects in the works, the most imminent and high-profile of which should be The Imitation Game, a World War II espionage thriller that also stars Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightley. It will hit screens later this year, and I look forward to it, as I look forward to all of Dance’s future on-screen endeavors, with great anticipation.

The lion may not concern himself with the opinions of the sheep, but I sincerely hope that Charles Dance knows how much we, the Game of Thrones audience, love him and cherish everything that he has given us during his time on the show.

For me, and perhaps for some of you, Charles Dance’s portrayal of Tywin Lannister was Tywin Lannister. When the time comes for me to revisit the books, it will be his Tywin that I will see. My experience with this world of Ice and Fire is richer because of everything that Charles Dance has contributed to it, and for that I am extremely grateful.

Whatever Charles’s performance as Tywin meant to you, his legacy will endure. The great river will flow ever onwards, and across realms both real and imagined, the Rains of Castamere will continue to fall.

Thanks to Charles Dance, they will be heard by many more souls to come.

Fire And Blood: Thank you Jared, for your wonderful words. I’m very happy with how this turned out. You have acquitted yourself honorably, ser. We need to do this again!

And thank you Charles, for taking this great role and for giving all that you had to give!

Brothers and sisters of House Wicnet! I call to you! Rise as one, lend us your voices in praise and song and show this tremendous man your love! Here you roar!

ART NOTE: The Tywin Lannister painting (second image from the top) was done by Jean Pascal, whose work can be found here. The Tywin Lannister bust (freaking awesome) was done by Adam Fisher, whose work can be found here.

• Published on 06/26/2014 at 8:01 PM CDT
• Last updated on 10/21/2016 at 12:41 PM CDT