Marriage Quote by Jim Dale

Dale’s line isn’t the grandstanding “family first” soundbite it could be; it’s a negotiation. He frames travel as something earned by the work, not demanded by the industry. “Good material, a good director and a good company” reads like a three-part filter, but it’s also a polite way of saying he’s done being lured abroad by prestige alone. The repetition of “good” is telling: not “important,” not “career-making,” not “high paying” - just good. Craft over cachet.

The hard pivot lands on the real boundary: time. “I won’t work in another country for a year any longer” signals a veteran recalibrating after decades when long shoots, touring schedules, and overseas runs were treated as normal costs of ambition. He’s naming what performers are often trained to swallow: that distance is supposed to be romantic, that absence makes the art. Dale refuses the myth. He doesn’t dress it up as discipline or productivity; he says the quiet thing out loud - he can’t bear it.

The emotional candor (“lovely wife,” “I adore her”) is almost disarmingly simple, and that’s the point. In a business that rewards reinvention, he plants his flag in devotion, not versatility. Subtext: he’s earned the leverage to choose, and he’s using it to protect a life that isn’t a supporting character to his career. It’s also a small rebuke to an industry that treats geography as a minor inconvenience and relationships as collateral.