Renée Asherson, a vivacious and stylish actor, who has died aged 99, enjoyed a career on stage and screen spanning 65 years. She will be remembered as the French princess in Laurence Oliviers wartime propaganda film version of Henry V, pertly trimming her garden roses while rehearsing the English words for delicate body parts.
She had made her screen debut earlier the same year, playing a small role in Carol Reeds The Way Ahead (1944), Peter Ustinovs script (from Eric Amblers story) showing how an army officer (David Niven) organised a bunch of disparate conscripts into a plausible fighting unit. She followed that with another war-time adventure, this time with more love interest, Anthony Asquiths The Way to the Stars (1945), scripted by Terence Rattigan, in which she played John Millss girlfriend, with Michael Redgrave and Rosamund John as a more straightforwardly middle-class pair.
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