Renée Asherson

Renée Asherson , born Dorothy Renée Ascherson (born May 19, 1915 in London - Kensington , United Kingdom , † October 30, 2014 in London- Primrose Hill , United Kingdom), was a British actress in stage, film and television. As an obituary put it, she was the "subtle, feminine exponent of the classic, both ancient and modern."

Live and act

The daughter of a British man of German descent grew up in Great Britain, Switzerland and France before she received her artistic training at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art in her native London . Renée Asherson made her theater debut on October 17, 1935 as an extra in a production of William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet with John Gielgud . She then went to the Birmingham Repertory Theater for a year and a half (1937/38), made her debut in front of the camera in a television production in 1939 and achieved her breakthrough as a theater artist with her engagement at London's famous Old Vic Theater , where she performed with Iris in May 1940 debuted in Shakespeare's Storm . She played other theater roles at the Old Vic with Kate Hardcastle in She Stoops to Conquer , Maria in Twelfth Night , Nerissa in The Merchant of Venice and Blanche in The Life and Death of King John . In between, Renée Asherson also appeared in the latter role in July 1941 at the New Theater (now the Noël Coward Theater). Here you saw her in 1942 in other Shakespeare roles but also at the Liverpool Playhouse and the Westminster Theater . In 1943 the slim, slender artist appeared as Henriette Duquesnoy in the play The Mask of Virtue at the Mercury Theater and was successful as Rose in Lottie Dundass at the Vaudeville Theater, also in London.

The "Old Vic" brought Asherson together with the most outstanding stage performers in England, in addition to Gielgud, Ralph Richardson and Laurence Olivier . She got the latter in front of the camera in 1943 for the central female leading role of the princess and later Queen Catherine in his Shakespeare film adaptation of Heinrich V. Despite early film successes, Renée Asherson always remained primarily an artist who primarily devoted herself to stage art. At the New Theater she worked again in the 1947/48 season, where she embodied a. a. the Bianca in Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew , the Queen in Richard II and Maria Antonovna in Nikolai Gogol's The Auditor .

In between, the Londoner returned to the big set-up cinema with the small part of the Iras in Caesar and Cleopatra in 1945. In the same year Renée Asherson was seen in Walter Greenwood's play The Cure for Love at the Westminster Theater. At her side played Robert Donat , who was to become her husband in the last five years of his life (1953 to 1958). Four years later (1949) Asherson was also seen in the theatrical version of The Cure for Love . At the Aldwych Theater , Renée Asherson played Beatrice in Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing in 1947 , and another two years later she was Stella Kowalski in the first London production of Tennessee Williams ' End of the Line Longing . Laurence Olivier was her director again, and his wife Vivien Leigh took over the female lead role of Blanche Dubois. Later stage engagements brought Renée Asherson to the Apollo Theater and the Criterion Theater in 1956 , to St Martin's Theater in 1962 , to the Savoy Theater the following year and finally from 1973 to 1976 to the Theater Royal in York, Northern England .

Between her extensive stage engagements, Asherson initially returned to the cinema every now and then and, at the end of the war in 1945, for example, presented an appealing performance as the distanced, stiff WRAF recruiter Iris Winterton in the world war drama The Way to the Stars . After 1954, the artist was only seen sporadically in the cinema, and her screen career was in a steep decline: Her distinguished interpretations of British stiff-upper-lip ladies of the upper class seemed too intellectual and brittle and out of date for modern post-war England. Instead, Asherson often appeared in television productions, including several series. Already in 1952 she received a part corresponding to her aristocratic appearance: that of Queen Victoria in Happy and Glorious . Your later series appearances usually had more of the character of guest appearances. At the turn of the millennium, the 85-year-old actress ended her screen activities with the small role as an unspecified old lady in a feature film production with Nicole Kidman , the Gothic horror story The Others .

Filmography

• 1939: Smiling at Grief (early TV movie)
• 1944: The Way Ahead
• 1944: Heinrich V ( Henry V )
• 1945: The Way to the Stars
• 1945: Caesar and Cleopatra ( Caesar and Cleopatra )
• 1948: Race to Death ( Once a Jolly Swagman )
• 1948: Experts from the Back Room ( The Small Back Room )
• 1949: The Cure for Love
• 1950: Underworld ( Pool of London )
• 1951: The Wonderful Flicker Box ( The Magic Box )
• 1952: Happy and Glorious (TV series)
• 1953: Malta Story
• 1954: Deadly Deals ( Time Is My Enemy )
• 1960: At Home
• 1961: The Day the Earth Caught Fire ( The Day the Earth Caught Fire )
• 1965: Rasputin - the mad monk ( Rasputin, the Mad Monk )
• 1969: The Smashing Bird I Used to Know
• 1972: Theater of Blood ( Theater of Blood )
• 1974: Miss Nightingale
• 1976: Clayhanger (TV series)
• 1978: Armchair Thriller (TV series)
• 1981: Tenko (TV series)
• 1984: Edwin
• 1985: Romance on the Orient Express
• 1989: Norbert Smith, a Life
• 1990: Life After Life
• 1993: Hogan's peacocks ( Harnessing Peacocks )
• 1998: Gray Owl and the Beavers Treasure ( Gray Owl )
• 2000: The Others

literature

• International Motion Picture Almanac 1965, Quigley Publishing Company, New York 1964, p. 10

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Renée Asherson in the Daily Telegraph, November 4, 2014

Web links

• Renée Asherson in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Obituary in The Daily Telegraph, November 4, 2014
• Obituary in The Scotsman, November 6, 2014