If Charles Dance was "an out-and-out bastard" as the philandering Earl of Erroll in White Mischief's imbroglio of decadent British aristos in wartime Kenya, in this month's Pascali's Island he brings a uniquely enigmatic polish to the cultural imperialism of the Englishman abroad. Posing as an erudite archaeologist, the Edwardian gentleman-adventurer with the supercilious charm and looks of a rather soigne sun god has barely stepped off the boat before he's conned a fortune from the pasha on the Turkish-occupied Greek island of Nisi - a hot little bubble in the cauldron of the Mediterranean in 1908.

Both the eponymous spy (Ben Kingsley) and the resident lady artist (Helen Mirren) of this ravishing screen version of Barry Unsworth's novel - adapted and directed by James Dearden, who wrote Fatal Attraction - fall under the Englishman's spell, but is Anthony Bowles an unscrupulous freebooter or ultimately a man of honor? It is a measure of Dance's guile that he keeps us guessing until the end.

"It's a film that doesn't pretend to be anything other than what it is," he asserts. "A bloody good story, well told, looks a treat, performances not too bad. The ambiguity in Bowles - he's a bit of a rogue - appealed to me, as it always does in a character. None of us is what he appears to be, and on the rare occasions one is offered an opportunity to demonstrate that fact, any self-respecting actor would grab it."

With his air of sleek disdain, sensual arrogance, and unabashed masculine authority, Dance is the most stylish leading man currently working in British films - his Hollywood foray as the devil in The Golden Child not withstanding. "I'd like to work in America again because I think it's important to keep a relatively high profile there - otherwise nobody'll put any money on you."

Born in Plymouth, Devon, in 1946, he went to art school, paid for private acting lessons with pints of beer, and joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1975. The came PBS's The Jewel in the Crown and at 38, a movie debut as Meryl Streep's long-suffering husband in Plenty.

Naturally confident and not disposed to explaining his craft as some kind of mystical process, the genuinely charming Dance - who lives with his wife, Joanna, and their son and daughter in North London - reveals a rare concern for the other phases of film-making. "Because I went to art school rather than drama school, I am quite well educated visually and love the whole business of optics and lenses. That's why I've done only films for the last five years, although I would like to return to the stage before too long in case my theatrical muscles get slack."

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