Dominic West as Prince Charles on The Crown. Photo / Netflix

Dominic West has responded to claims he was “too handsome” to play Prince Charles in The Crown.

The actor plays the new monarch when he was Prince of Wales in the latest season of the hit Netflix drama, but many viewers have complained the 53-year-old telly star doesn’t look much like the royal and is actually too good looking to pass as a younger version of Charles.

However, West isn’t letting the criticism get him down. He was asked about the comments during an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live! on Tuesday November 29, and replied: “Well thank you very much. I’ve had worse criticisms.”

Kimmel went on to ask the actor if he felt at all nervous playing the man who is now the King, saying: “Does that make you at all nervous seeing as he could have you beheaded if he wants to, he’s the King?”

West replied: “Right, yeah, well, no he can’t. I mean, they’ve sort of tried. They’re having a go. This was his sort of nadir of his whole life.”

The actor went on to insist he felt a huge responsibility playing the royal during such a difficult time of his life as he struggled with the breakdown of his marriage to the late Diana, Princess of Wales.

He added: “You see pictures of him then and video and stuff and he’s very, very sad and that’s quite a responsibility taking that on.”

During the show, West also recreated the scene from The Crown in which Charles is seen breakdancing at a charity event in 1985 and admitted it was actually harder to dance badly than well.

He said: “Charles is quite proud of his dancing, he does a lot of Scottish dancing.”

“The difficulty is there’s no rhythm, there’s no, it’s completely arrhythmic, so you can’t sort of, the trouble I found is the music is playing you get too much into the rhythm which is a fatal mistake ...”

“It’s much harder to dance out of time ... he does it brilliantly.”