Hugh Dancy

Actor

• Born: June 19, 1975
• Place of Birth: Stoke-on-Trent, England

Hugh Dancy is an Emmy-nominated English actor best known for his roles in the films Adam (2009) and Hysteria (2011) and as Special Agent Will Graham in the NBC thriller series Hannibal (2013–15).

Background

Hugh Dancy was born on June 19, 1975, in Stoke-on-Trent, England. He is the oldest of three children of Jonathan Dancy, a philosopher and professor, and Sarah Dancy, a publisher.

Dancy started out in the acting profession in an unconventional way. When he misbehaved as a child, his parents would send him to a nearby theater as a form of punishment and reform. The method had the opposite effect, and by the time Dancy was a teenager, he came to love acting and wanted to pursue it full time.

The actor began to appear in local Shakespearean productions, but when he reached college age, he did not enroll in professional acting classes. To appease the high standards of his academic father, Dancy studied English at Oxford University. After graduating, he moved to London to try to succeed as a theater actor, working as a waiter and bartender to support himself.

Career

Dancy managed to obtain various roles in stage productions in London theaters, but no substantial work came his way until he secured an agent. With the agent’s help, Dancy made his screen debut on the television series Trial and Retribution. He appeared in the series’ second season, in 1998.

In 1998 and 1999, Dancy found work in episodic television series, and he appeared in various small roles on such shows as The New Adventures of Robin Hood, Cold Feet, and Kavanagh QC.

In 2000, Dancy acquired a starring role as the adult titular character in the television film David Copperfield, based on the Charles Dickens novel. The film was a joint American and English production, and Dancy found himself working alongside American stars Sally Field and Michael Richards. That same year, Dancy appeared as part of the main cast of the television film Madame Bovary, based on the Gustav Flaubert novel.

Dancy’s feature film debut came in 2001, as a young medic in director Ridley Scott’s high-profile war film Black Hawk Down. After appearing as the titular character of another English television film, the miniseries Daniel Deronda (2002), Dancy was back in feature films in 2003, acting with Jessica Alba in The Sleeping Dictionary and with Melanie Griffith and Rachael Leigh Cook in Tempo.

Though The Sleeping Dictionary eventually faded away with almost no audience, it helped Dancy establish an acting niche for himself as a sensitive romantic. In 2004’s Ella Enchanted, a retelling of Cinderella based on the novel by Gail Carson Levine, Dancy portrays Char, the prince Ella (Anne Hathaway) falls in love with. In the big-budget action-adventure film King Arthur, also released in 2004, Dancy plays the part of Galahad. Both of these films were high-profile enough to earn Dancy widespread critical notice, and he soon began receiving requests for interviews and appearing in mainstream entertainment magazines.

By this time, Dancy had garnered enough notice in both England and America to be offered the role of the Earl of Essex in the 2006 English television miniseries Elizabeth I. As Essex, Dancy portrays the youthful noble who became the lover of the older Elizabeth I (Helen Mirren). The series was almost universally acclaimed, winning an Emmy Award and Golden Globe for best miniseries. Dancy himself was nominated for an Emmy for best supporting actor.

Following this television success, Dancy returned to features. While acting in the 2007 romantic drama Evening he met costar Claire Danes, whom he began dating and later married. The film did not fare well with critics or audiences. That same year, Dancy starred as an artist who forms a romance with a werewolf in the flop Blood and Chocolate.

Amid his work in film, Dancy took time to return to the stage in 2008, acting in a revival of the World War I drama Journey’s End. The production was widely lauded and won a Tony for best revival of a play. In 2009, Dancy starred in the positively reviewed independent film Adam, in which he plays a young man with what was then considered Asperger syndrome. Later that year, he starred alongside Isla Fisher in the film Confessions of a Shopaholic.

In 2010, Dancy starred in the Off-Broadway production The Pride, which received critical acclaim and gave a boost to the actor’s career. The following year he appeared on Broadway opposite Nina Arianda in David Ives’s Venus in Fur. In 2011’s Martha Marcy May Marlene, Dancy portrays Ted, the husband of a young woman suffering from paranoia after joining a cult. The film was widely praised, and Dancy followed this success with the leading role in the comedic period film Hysteria.

Dancy next delivered a highly lauded performance as a cancer patient in the second season (2011) of the award-winning Showtime drama The Big C. The recurring role of Lee Fallon had him befriending the show’s main character, Laura Linney’s cancer-stricken Cathy Jamison. Dancy has viewed his spot on the show as an accomplishment, as it proved he would not always have to act in costume dramas to achieve success.

In 2013, Dancy was cast in the leading role of FBI special agent Will Graham on NBC’s thriller series Hannibal, based on characters from Thomas Harris’s 1981 novel Red Dragon. In the show, Graham turns to the famously brilliant psychiatrist and secret cannibalistic serial killer Dr. Hannibal Lecter for help on a murder case. The show’s first season was a great success, and by the spring of 2013, Dancy had signed on for a second season. While Hannibal was subsequently renewed for a third season, it was ultimately canceled due to poor ratings, with the final episodes airing in 2015. Still, by the following year, Dancy had begun a new venture portraying Cal Roberts in the Hulu original series The Path, about a family caught up in a cult led by the character played by Dancy. The series ran from 2016 to 2018 before also being canceled. He next appeared alongside Emma Thompson and Mindy Kaling in the film Late Night (2019). In 2022, Dancy took on the role of Nolan Price, an executive assistant district attorney, on the popular NBC crime procedural series Law & Order.

Impact

Hugh Dancy was at first an unusual candidate for an acting career. Nevertheless, he found moderate success early on with Shakespearean stage productions and television films before making his way into features with a handsome Prince Charming persona. He played many such roles before branching out into more serious territory like The Big C, Hannibal, and The Path, proving his versatility as a talented actor.

Personal Life

Dancy married actor Claire Danes in September 2009. Their first son, Cyrus, was born in December 2012, their second son was born in August 2019, and their daughter was born in 2023.

Bibliography

“By the Book: Hugh Dancy.” The New York Times 20 May 2012: BR8. Print.

Fox, Killian. “Hugh Dancy: ‘I Was Told I’d Always Be Cast in Posh Parts.’” The Guardian, 4 Feb. 2012, www.theguardian.com/film/2012/feb/05/hugh-dancy-martha-marcy-may-interview. Accessed 20 Sept. 2024.

Friend, Tad. "Charisma." The New Yorker, 11 Apr. 2016, www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/04/18/hugh-dancy-the-cult-leader. Accessed 20 Sept. 2024.

"Hugh Dancy." IMDb, www.imdb.com/name/nm0199215/. Accessed 20 Sept. 2024.

Neumyer, Scott. “Q&A: Hugh Dancy Sits Down with Hannibal.” Esquire, 4 Apr. 2013, www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/interviews/a21513/hugh-dancy-hannibal-interview/. Accessed 20 Sept. 2024.

Siegle, Lucy. “Need to Know: Hugh Dancy.” The Guardian, 16 Nov. 2002, www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2002/nov/17/ethicalliving. Accessed 20 Sept. 2024.