'Dance with the Devil' On Devil Called Love

Despite his advancing years, actor Charles Dance - pinup darling of the internet dating service Devil Called Love - makes a point of being in the right physical shape to shed his clothes for the cameras at a moment's notice should the need arise.

At the age of 61, it means he sets himself the sort of punishing fitness regime that would have a man half his age on his knees. On weekend mornings, he rises early at his North London home and cycles furiously to nearby Hampstead Heath.

There, winter or summer, he strips off for a bracing 20-minute swim in the unheated outdoor pool. And while some others who brave the cold water first don a wet suit, Dance thrashes up and down in his skimpy Speedos.

After a hot shower, he pedals back home, before submitting himself to exactly an hour and ten minutes of pumping iron, yoga and Pilates. His efforts have not been in vain. In recent times, he's appeared in nothing more than fishnets and a red rubber micro mini-skirt in Ali G In Da House, and completely naked (with just a pepper pot to protect his modesty) in another Britflick.

His on-screen disrobing, it should be said, does not necessarily have to be in the name of art. 'Oh, I'll do anything for money, darling,' he is fond of saying.

Nonetheless, Dance is justifiably proud of his 6ft 3in physique. Plus, of course, there is the added advantage that his buff body ensures he remains positive catnip to a carousel of younger women.

Take last weekend, for example. The still handsome star, who made his name as a series of dashing leading men in the likes of The Jewel In The Crown and White Mischief, was to be spotted, after his morning dip, in the company of a suitably enamoured younger blonde as they strolled on nearby Parliament Hill Fields.

Intriguingly, she was not the statuesque and beautiful former Gucci model, Shambhala Marthe, who has been filling the on-off role of Dance's arm candy for the past three years.

But then trying to keep tabs on the ginger-haired Lothario's tangled amorous adventures would tax the logistical capabilities of a PowerPoint presentation. No wonder Dance has developed a reputation in the theatrical circles in which he moves for occasionally casting himself in something akin to the role of smooth-talking bounder.

Certainly, he has acquired, of late, the sort of unenviable love-them-and-leave-them status that has led his showbiz chums to christen him, jokily, Dance With The Devil. And the French-born Miss Marthe, 36, is hardly alone in discovering her posh-sounding lover is not quite the gentleman he has made a career out of playing.

Witness his treatment of Sophia Myles, who starred as Lady Penelope in the movie version of Thunderbirds. The blonde Miss Myles, just 23 when she started dating Dance five years ago, was said to be 'utterly devastated' when dumped out of the blue in 2005.

She had, according to friends, been expecting him to propose - but Dance suddenly called time on their affair, as her circle muttered darkly that 'the Charles who starts relationships is very different from the one who ends them'.

Dance, it is said, had relentlessly pursued vicar's daughter Miss Myles and told her she was the 'love of his life'. But when the time came for him to move on, her friends accused her ageing lover of treating her 'cruelly and bizarrely'.

A treatment, one imagines, that might chime with Joanna, Dance's sculptress wife and mother of his two grown-up children, whom he left equally suddenly in 2003 after 33 years of marriage. Within months, he was to be spotted out and about looking very cosy with Miss Myles, whom he had met two years earlier on the set of the ITV adaptation of the Dickens classic Nicholas Nickleby.

As part of the divorce settlement, the couple, who have a son Oliver, 33, and daughter Rebecca, 24, had to sell their idyllic 17th-century Somerset manor house and Dance moved into a modest terrace bachelor pad in London's Kentish Town.

Later, he admitted to 'an unexpected series of watersheds' in the run-up to the end of the marriage, and only recently felt able to confess he was 'not the greatest husband in the world'.Miss Myles was not the first time he had been linked with another woman during the marriage.

In 2001, three years before the split with his wife, he was said to have struck up a close friendship with the then 27-year-old Emilia Fox, actress daughter of Edward Fox and Joanna David. In the immediate aftermath of the marriage, he was also reported to be dating an unnamed woman 12 years his senior.

And a few months after the split, he was seen in Barbados with Hilary Heath, ex-wife of millionaire showbusiness agent Duncan Heath. Since then he has been seen out with a seemingly never-ending procession of attractive women.

Friends of his told the Mail this week that one of the many women he has taken a shine to is former newsreader Anna Ford, whom, they say, he has escorted on a series of dates, including to the open-air opera in London's Holland Park.

None of which, one imagines, will have gone down particularly well with Miss Marthe, the 6ft 2in catwalk model-turned-photographer whom Dance met in a London fruit and veg market in 2005. It was not long before he was taking her on dates to his favourite Polish restaurant in Shepherd's Bush and on holiday to Turkey. He also sat for her as she took a series of rather flattering portraits of him.

Soon the smitten Shambhala, who came to Britain from France 11 years ago, was gushing about how the handsome actor had bought her a ring from a stall on a bazaar while they were away as a 'love token'. 'It's not expensive, but he knows my taste very well and that means a lot to me,' she trilled at the time. 'He's great company, and older men know how to woo a lady.'

Significantly, perhaps, she took to wearing the ring on her right hand. But friends say that after one failed marriage, Dance is not keen to tie the knot again. Nor is he inclined to give up his independence. Instead, he has become a familiar figure at showbusiness parties, prowling the room on the lookout for what he calls 'glamorous creatures'.

'I like women, to be perfectly frank with you,' he recently told an interviewer. 'I feel 35. I probably act 25.'

All of which has the unmistakable whiff of mid-life crisis about it. He has also taken recently to wearing trendy 'urban wear' off screen, including baggy jeans and heavy black combat boots. And despite rave reviews for his stage work, Dance, whose portrayal of the dashing Guy Perron in the acclaimed 1983 ITV series The Jewel In The Crown made him a instant heart-throb to millions of female fans, is said by friends to mourn the passing of his movie star status and once-lustrous hair.

Indeed, it's 15 years since he last appeared in a major Hollywood film - Arnold Schwarzenegger's much-derided Last Action Hero - and 21 since he starred in White Mischief opposite Greta Scacchi.

A director friend told the Mail: 'I honestly believe when Charles looks in the mirror, he still sees himself at 30.' No wonder, given his taste for a revolving door of girlfriends, Dance is making sure he stays in shape with those freezing morning dips.