Hugh Dancy
Hugh Dancy is an actor, born 1975.
Television gave Hugh Dancy his first lead, the title role in a 2000 adaptation of David Copperfield, and television has kept handing him the parts that matter. Film work followed quickly: SFC Kurt "Doc" Schmid in Black Hawk Down (2001), Galahad in King Arthur and Prince Char in Ella Enchanted, both 2004. That pairing is instructive. Dancy is English, well spoken and photogenic in a way that got him cast in armor and courtly costume for most of a decade, and those roles rarely asked him for anything.
What he can actually do shows up when a director lets him play strain. As Adam Raki in Adam (2009) and as Ted in Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011) he works in a register most leading men avoid, courteous on the surface and visibly effortful underneath, so that the politeness itself becomes the performance. Hannibal, from 2013 to 2015, built a whole series around that quality: Will Graham, a criminal profiler, played as a permeable man in a show about people who are anything but.
The career since has gone character actor rather than leading man, and it suits him. Cal Roberts in Hulu's The Path (2016 to 2018), Charlie Fain in Late Night, Jack Barber in Downton Abbey: A New Era. He has an Emmy nomination for the Channel 4 miniseries Elizabeth I (2005) and a Saturn Award for Best Actor on Television, and since 2022 a steady weekly job as Senior Assistant District Attorney Nolan Price on the revived Law & Order. It is an odd resting place for an actor who spent his twenties in chainmail, and he is good in it.
Movies (22)
- Black Hawk Down (2001)
- King Arthur (2004)
- Confessions of a Shopaholic (2009)
- Ella Enchanted (2004)
- Basic Instinct 2 (2006)
- Downton Abbey: A New Era (2022)
- Savage Grace (2007)
- The Sleeping Dictionary (2003)
- Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011)
- Our Idiot Brother (2011)
- Hysteria (2011)
- Legends of Oz: Dorothy's Return (2014)
- Evening (2007)
- Late Night (2019)
- The Jane Austen Book Club (2007)
- Adam (2009)
- Shooting Dogs (2006)
- Blood and Chocolate (2007)
- The Custom of the Country
- Coach (2010)
- Getting the Old Scent Again: Reimagining Red Dragon (2015)
- Tempo (2003)
TV (9)
Where to start with Hugh Dancy
Hannibal first, and it is not close. Will Graham asks Dancy to play a man being slowly worn through, and he does it without ever raising his voice, which makes the show's more baroque business land harder than it has any right to.
From there, Adam and Martha Marcy May Marlene are the two films that deploy the same quality properly, one as the title role, one in an ensemble where he has to sour the mood without seeming to try. The Path is the nearest thing to a follow-up. If you want the earlier, glossier version, Black Hawk Down holds up and Daniel Deronda is the best of the costume work; Ella Enchanted is skippable unless you are eight. He turns up weekly as a prosecutor on Law & Order, which is a fine place to see the polish and a poor place to see the actor.