Jane Asher

Asher has appeared in television shows and films such as Deep End (1970), The Masque of the Red Death (1964), Alfie (1966), The Mistress, Crossroads, Death at a Funeral (2007), and The Old Guys. She also appeared in two episodes of the 1950s TV series The Buccaneers alongside Robert Shaw. She was Paul McCartney's girlfriend from 1963 to 1968. Asher has been nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for the film Deep End and the British Academy Television Award for Best Actress for television performances in A Voyage Round My Father (1982) and Love Is Old, Love Is New (1982).

Asher was born in London, the middle of three children born to Richard and Margaret Asher, née Eliot. Her father was a consultant in blood and mental diseases at the Central Middlesex Hospital, as well as being a broadcaster and the author of notable medical articles. Her mother was a professor at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Asher was educated at Miss Lambert's PNEU School for Girls at Paddington, North Bridge House School, and then at Queen's College in Harley Street, London. Asher's elder brother is record producer and manager Peter Asher, who began his career as Peter of Peter and Gordon.

In 2004, she starred in Festen at the Arts Theatre. In 2005, she starred in The World's Biggest Diamond, by Gregory Motton, at the Royal Court Theatre. In October 2009, she appeared as Delia in Peter Hall's revival of Alan Ayckbourn's Bedroom Farce at the Rose Theatre, Kingston, and in her first pantomime, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs at Richmond Theatre in December 2009, receiving enthusiastic reviews for both. In 2011, she returned to the Rose, Kingston as Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest. In 2012, she appeared in Charley's Aunt at the Menier Chocolate Factory. In the summer of 2013, she played Lady Catherine de Bourgh in Pride and Prejudice at the Open Air Theatre, Regent's Park. In 2014, she starred in the stage adaptation of Penelope Lively's Moon Tiger at the Theatre Royal Bath and on tour. In 2016, Asher took on the role of Miss Havisham in Michael Eaton's adaptation of Great Expectations. She took on the role of Madame Baurel in the 2017 London stage production of An American in Paris. In 2019 she toured in Noël Coward's A Song at Twilight. In 2023 she played Lady Kitty in Somerset Maugham's The Circle, in a touring production directed by Tom Littler that opened at the Orange Tree Theatre, in Richmond, London.

Asher has written three novels: The Longing, The Question, and Losing It, and published more than a dozen lifestyle, costuming, and cake decorating books. Asher owns a company that makes party cakes and sugar crafts for special occasions. She is a shareholder in Private Eye, president of Arthritis Care, and a patron of Scoliosis Association (UK). She is also president of the National Autistic Society. She was a speaker at the 2006 launch of the National Autistic Society's "Make School Make Sense" campaign and is president of Parkinson's UK. In March 2010, Asher became vice president to Autistica, a UK charity raising funds for autism research. Asher is also a patron of TRACKS Autism, an early years nursery setting for children on the autistic spectrum and The Daisy Garland, a national registered charity supporting children with drug resistant epilepsy.

Asher met Paul McCartney on 18 April 1963 at the Royal Albert Hall in London, and began a five-year relationship with him. In December 1963, McCartney took up residence at Asher's family Wimpole Street townhouse and stayed there until the couple moved into McCartney's own home in St John's Wood in 1966. McCartney wrote several Beatles songs inspired by Asher, including "And I Love Her", "For No One", "I'm Looking Through You", "Things We Said Today", "We Can Work It Out", "What You're Doing" and "You Won't See Me". The couple announced on Christmas Day 1967 that they were engaged to be married, and Asher accompanied the Beatles and their partners to Rishikesh, India in early 1968 to attend an advanced transcendental meditation training session with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. In mid-1968, she returned to London from an acting assignment in Bristol earlier than expected and allegedly discovered McCartney in bed with Francie Schwartz, an American artist. Shortly afterwards, her mother, Margaret Asher, drove to Cavendish Avenue to collect her daughter's belongings. On 20 July 1968, Asher announced to the BBC that her engagement had been called off. McCartney soon after started dating Linda Eastman, whom he married in March 1969. A problem in the relationship had been McCartney's drug use and close relationship with John Lennon. Asher confided to Beatles' biographer Hunter Davies that McCartney had "changed so much. He was on LSD, which I hadn't shared. I was jealous of all the spiritual experiences he'd had with John. There were fifteen people dropping in all day long. The house had changed and was full of stuff I didn't know about." She was one of many people interviewed for Davies' The Beatles: The Authorised Biography, and the quotes used mark her last public comments regarding McCartney. Asher dislikes discussing her relationship with McCartney; saying in 2004: "I've been happily married for 30-something years. It's insulting." Asher attended the 1970 London premiere of the Beatles' movie Let It Be, along with Lennon's ex-wife Cynthia. In 1971, Asher met illustrator Gerald Scarfe. They married in 1981 and have three children. As part of a 2009 campaign by the Parkinson's Disease Society, Asher was one of a group of people, including Jeremy Paxman and John Stapleton, who pledged to donate their brains to Parkinson's research following their death.