Alan Hugh Dale (born 6 May 1947) is a New Zealand actor. As a child, Dale enjoyed theatre and rugby. After retiring from the sport, he took on a number of occupations, before deciding to become a professional actor at age 27. Dale subsequently moved to Australia, where he played Dr. John Forrest in The Young Doctors from 1979 to 1982. He later appeared as Jim Robinson in Neighbours, a part he played from 1985 until 1993. He left the series when he fell out with the producers over the pay he and the rest of the cast received.

After leaving Neighbours, Dale found he had become typecast as Jim Robinson in Australia and struggled to find work. His career was revitalised after he relocated to the United States in 2000. Since then, he has had roles in many American series including prominent parts in The O.C. (as Caleb Nichol) and Ugly Betty (as Bradford Meade), as well as recurring and guest roles in Lost, 24, NCIS, ER, The West Wing, The X-Files, Entourage and Once Upon a Time. From 2017 to 2021, Dale starred in the soap opera Dynasty as Joseph Anders. Dale has also appeared in minor roles in films such as Star Trek: Nemesis, Hollywood Homicide, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Captain America: The Winter Soldier, as well as the London West End production of Spamalot. Dale has been married to former Miss Australia Tracey Pearson since 1990 and has four children.

"When I was 27, I started to get really jumpy and thought, what could I do that would give me the same buzz rugby did? Acting was what came to mind. I told my first wife, 'Look, I really can't stand it any more. I'm going to have to go and be an actor'."

Dale was born on 6 May 1947 in Dunedin, New Zealand. One of four children, Dale enjoyed his childhood, but his family was relatively poor. Growing up in New Zealand without television, Dale loved rugby union, the theatre and amateur dramatics. His first performance was for a school concert, at the age of 13, doing an impression of comedian Shelley Berman. After moving northwards, his parents became founding members of an amateur theatre in Auckland called 'The Little Dolphin Theatre'. Dale often operated the stage equipment used to produce weather effects,

Dale was a skilled rugby player, but opted to move into drama instead because "the acting fraternity didn't like footballers and the footballers didn't like actors. [...] Acting gave me the same buzz and there was the chance of a longer career." He gave up rugby at the age of 21 because it was not considered a workable career at the time, and he had to support his family. Acting roles were limited in New Zealand so Dale worked in multiple jobs, including as a male model, a car salesman and a realtor. While working as a milkman he heard the disc jockey at his local radio station resign during a broadcast. Dale went over to the station and told the managers he could do a better job. They gave him a trial and then signed him up for the afternoon show. At the age of 27, he decided to become a professional actor.

Dale's first professional acting job was playing an Indian in a production of The Royal Hunt of the Sun at the Grafton Theatre in Auckland. His first on-screen role came as radio station manager Jack Delamore in the New Zealand television drama Radio Waves in 1978. The show was not successful, running for a single season, but Dale described it as "nine months of solid work and great fun." In the late 1970s, Dale moved to Australia at the age of 32, due to the limited acting work in New Zealand. He applied to the National Institute of Dramatic Art in Sydney, but was rejected because he "was a lot older than anybody else on the course." He was soon cast as Dr. John Forrest in the Australian soap opera The Young Doctors, where he remained for three-and-a-half years until 1982.

In January 1985, Dale was cast in the continuing role of Jim Robinson in the Australian soap opera Neighbours, one of the twelve original characters conceived by the show's creator Reg Watson. He was appearing in a small role in the series Possession when he was offered the part of Jim by producer John Holmes. He replaced actor Robin Harrison, who had originally been cast in the role and had already filmed some scenes before his contract negotiations broke down. The scenes featuring Harrison's performance were re-shot with Dale. The character had intrigued Dale, who thought that parts of Jim's life echoed his own life at the time. He said "It's like it was written for me. It's a great role and naturally it's one I can really relate to. You have to be fairly similar to a character you play, otherwise you'd go insane." Dale chose to relocate from Sydney to Melbourne, where Neighbours was filmed, but commuted between the two cities for some time while he was still appearing on Possession.

He found working on Neighbours "exciting" and it enabled him to provide for his sons, but has spoken negatively about the show's producers, stating: "You were a totally replaceable commodity; [the production company] didn't put any value on any of the people appearing in the show." Dale appeared on the show from the first episode and stayed for eight years before his character was killed off in 1993, appearing in 1064 episodes. Dale quit the show due to feeling he and the rest of the cast were underpaid, and said he parted on "bad terms" with the production company Grundy Television. He expanded: "I didn't like it there, they were not nice people. When we decided that we hated each other, the company and me, one of the things the company did was to market everything they could out of us and pay us nothing." In 2018, Dale returned to Neighbours to film scenes for two episodes, which aired in December 2018 and March 2019, in each of which he appeared as Jim in a dream to Jim's son Paul. Of his return, Dale stated that it had "laid a load of ghosts to rest for me", regarding his original exit.