From Studio EXec

Happy as Murderers

Veteran stage, TV and film actor Charles Dance admitted in an interview with Danish bacon magazine Swine that in his early days at Hollywood he would regularly murder strangers for fun. 'This was the early eighties and there was something in the air,' Dance told Swine journalist Bogdon Hergwitz. 'I was young and I'd just finished The Jewel in the Crown miniseries for the BBC. My agent sent me out to Hollywood and I got work inPlenty, The Golden Child and White Mischief. I was riding high and I got into a fast crowd and yes, some people got murdered.'



Among the gang were other British actors Julian Sands, Rupert Everett and Alan Rickman. The best thing in Alien 3 said:

We would typically go round to someone's house for drinks and then out to a restaurant for dinner, after which we would pick a stranger at random and murder them. We never bothered with alibis or disguises or even avoiding witnesses. Everyone knew we were doing it, but when the police interviewed us they would find our English accents so charming they'd let us off with a warning.

Over the years it is estimated that the Brit Shits - as they called themselves - murdered over 50 people. Mr Dance, who has been on screens recently as the Lannister patriarch in Game of Thrones:

In all honesty we lost count. I remember Julian kept a scrapbook and Rupert collected fingers, but both of them got muddled so I don't know. It all came to an end when Hugh Grant joined the group. His excesses were so vile it made us all take a long hard look at ourselves and we didn't like what we saw. So we stopped. 

Do you regret you actions? The lives you cut short?

No, absolutely not. It was fun. Why should I regret it?