A former Coronation Street actor has found success running his family-owned record shop.
Charles Dale, who played Dennis Stringer in the ITV Soap, works at Dale's Music. The store has been with Charles' family since 1947, when Charles' grandad owned the music shop, with his dad Laurie, taking on the shop in 1964.
Whilst he still enjoys a prolific acting career, Charles can be found perched behind the counter chatting to customers and answering questions about vinyl.
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Known for his roles in Casualty, as Big Mac, Chef in '90s dark drama, The Lakes and Corrie, Charles has recently been spotted in ITV big hitters, The Pembrokeshire Murders and Unforgotten. Now, as well as the acting and the shop, which he looks after with sister Linzi and her husband Richard, Charles is also a Tenby town councillor, reports WalesOnline.
Charles lived in London for 20 years, after leaving Tenby at 17 to attend the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA). But his passion for performing started at home, in the tall, skinny building where the shop is found and where, growing up, Charles and his family lived in the basement with his parents, dad Laurie and mam, Marion.
He said: "We actually used to have a baby grand in the back corner where I used to have to do my piano practice, while people nosed through the door, which obviously went down like a lead balloon and my mother used to say, 'will you and your father having an argument before or after supper?' So that's why I became a guitarist basically."
"Dad was always a performer, a singer and locally did a lot of am drams and when mum was little she did a lot of radio. She did accents and dialect and I just grew up sitting at the back of rehearsal rooms at school or the De Valence, wherever they were putting on a play. So I grew up with it, it was the most natural thing in the world."
Acting was the goal for Charles, who took part in the National Youth Theatre. His mother wrote to the Torch Theatre in Milford Haven who saw the keen performer's potential but needed those who could play older parts, so instead Charles was given a job in stage management for £18 a week as part of a Youth Opportunities Program. At 17 he thought it was time to try and get into drama school and with a little bit of skilful promotion from dad, Laurie, he scored a place in LAMDA, only to almost get booted out after his first year.
He said: "I was far too young to go and I spent my time getting drunk and girls and couldn't concentrate and they nearly threw me out at the end of the first year. Thankfully my parents never knew." Luckily for Charles, a voice coach at the school convinced them to give him a second chance.
Charles said he loves the theatre but is taking a break currently while the world evens out after Covid, and has a CV full of appearances in British TV classics, from Lovejoy and Touch of Frost to his larger roles in Corrie, Casualty and The Pembrokeshire Murders, all the while keeping the family shop going alongside his sibling, Linzi.
He said: "I try and do different things and I think that has hampered my career to a certain degree.
"Because they do like to put you in boxes and if you can find a niche and sit in it that can do you quite a lot of good. But, I don't act for any other reason than I enjoy doing it and what's the point of doing something you don't enjoy repeating the same thing over and over again. Certain actors out there that do the same performance every bloody time and you just go 'really?' Try and be somebody different, that's the job."
He added: "I thoroughly enjoyed Corrie, I had a very nice time socially, it was great cast, Simon Gregson is my son's godfather, you know, Steve McDonald, I had really good mates up there. I loved Manchester it's a great city, and then Casualty, for the first four years, I commuted from Cardiff to Bristol, and then just as it was getting to the point where I was like, 'I can't do this anymore.'
"And then they moved to Cardiff, two minutes from my house So I got to watch my son grow up and that's a real bonus for actors, because we're away. We're not home, that's just the nature of the beast."
With a few shows in the bag, including BBC's Sherwood, a six-part crime drama starring Lesley Manville and David Morrissey, and audio projects, things are pretty quiet for Charles so far this year. But, he doesn't seem to mind.
Charles said: "It's just as well really. I've got shop to run."
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