Shedding staff like autumn leaves, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle face the tenth anniversary of their meeting, later this year, with fewer people around them than either has had in a very long time.
Whether a dwindling income played a part in the drop in numbers of staff they don’t say, but it must come as a relief that Meghan will soon be back where she started – on the TV screen – with the upcoming release of ‘Close Personal Friends’ starring Lily Collins and Brie Larson.
Meghan was on set in California to film her part back in November, and the movie will air later this year.
The Duchess has only a cameo role – and may even have done it for free – but it’s a start on the road back to stardom.
Will it lead anywhere, though? Throughout history, princes have fallen in love with actresses – but their careers have not always prospered from their royal connections. Here we take a look at just a few of them…
DOROTHEA JORDAN (William IV)
She was a mistress, but never the wife, of the man who became King William IV.
She bore ‘Sailor Bill’ ten children, but in the end he dumped her when it looked as if the throne might come his way.
An accomplished actress, she came from Ireland and first made her name treading the boards up North before West End success. She wrote the song The Bluebells of Scotland but after being booted out by William never had another successful part, and died destitute.
NELLIE CLIFDEN (Edward VII)
She was also an Irish actress, but very little known about her career – she failed to capitalise on her royal connections.
Having met at a party in England in 1861, that same year Nellie met the 19-year-old Edward, Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII) again in Ireland while he was stationed with the Grenadier Guards.
When her tempestuous affair with him became known she was laughingly known as ‘The Princess of Wales’. But when it was over, so was her career.
LILLIE LANGTRY (Edward VII)
The actress came into Edward’s life much later, when he’d married the chilly Queen Alexandra.
Society beauty Lillie kept the prince amused for three years until she became pregnant by an ex-boyfriend.
She used the royal affair to springboard her acting career, aided by Oscar Wilde.
UNKNOWN ACTRESS (King George V)
He was the great-grandfather of King Charles, and was deeply sexually repressed.
Still, he couldn’t resist the roar of the greasepaint and according to his biographer, ‘kept’ an actress from the Theatre Royal, Southsea, while serving as a midshipman based in Portsmouth.
‘She’s a ripper!’ he wrote about her. We’ll never know how ripping – she disappeared after her brief liaison.
PHYLLIS MONKMAN (George VI)
The future King George VI was 23 and more than backward in the bedroom department.
The society photographer Cecil Beaton recalled: ‘Prince Albert [as he then was] showed no sign of the usual interest in the opposite sex, so some delightful, trustworthy young woman had to be chosen to initiate him.’ That person was the dancer and actress Phyllis Monkman, with ‘the finest legs on the West End stage’.
Bertie became besotted, and she gave him a cigarette lighter he continued to use for many years after his marriage to the Queen Mother.
She died aged 84 with a picture of her young conquest by her bedside.
ANDRÉE LAFAYETTE (Prince Andrew of Greece)
Like Meghan, she was a successful actress up till she met her prince – in this case, Prince Andrew of Greece.
He was the father of Prince Philip and grandfather of King Charles.
Andrée starred in a number of French films before becoming Andrew’s long-term mistress – but after his death her attempts at a comeback ended in failure.
The failed actress re-invented herself as Countess de la Bigne – a title she had no claim to – and pocketed the legacy which should rightfully gone to Philip.
COBINA WRIGHT (Prince Philip)
She was Prince Philip’s first great love, meeting him in Venice when both were 17, and spending three weeks ‘in passionate evenings in gondolas on the Grand Canal’.
That same year she signed a contract with 20th Century Fox and disappeared to Hollywood to star in nine films, opposite better-known stars including Betty Grable and Victor Mature.
Later in life she became and alcoholic, but recovered. She kept Philip’s photograph by her bed to the end.
PAT KIRKWOOD (Prince Philip)
A successful Lancashire-born stage actress, singer and dancer of whom Noel Coward was a great fan.
In a rare moment of indiscretion Prince Philip was found breakfasting with Pat after a night out on the town at the time when Queen Elizabeth (then Princess Elizabeth) was pregnant with Prince Charles in 1948. Both denied any impropriety.
HÉLÈNE CORDET (Prince Philip)
Though it was always denied, rumours persisted that the lively actress, nightclub owner and cabaret star who’d known Prince Philip since he was four had had a long affair with him.
Later, when married, it was repeatedly said that the prince had fathered both her children, Max Boisot and Louise Cordet – certainly he paid for their education.
SUSAN GEORGE (Prince Charles)
The beautiful blonde actress got to meet Prince Charles at his 30th birthday party at Buckingham Palace, having received an invitation ‘out of the blue’ after he’d seen her star as a rape victim in the X-rated film Straw Dogs.
A few days later a car was sent for her, and Charles played host to her in a flat overlooking St James’s Street.
According to the doyen of royal reporters, James Whitaker, ‘Susan stayed nearly all night, she did not get home until 7am.’ There were a couple more similar dates, but then the pair went their separate ways. Charles, according to Susan, was ‘very romantic and loving’.
KOO STARK (Andrew)
This actress met Prince Andrew at his 21st birthday party at Buckingham Palace.
At the time she had a part in Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? at the National Theatre, and her acting career looked promising.
The couple were together for two years but their relationship ultimately hit a crisis point and then ended.
Moderately successful as a film and stage actress, since the 1980s she’s concentrated on her work as a photographer.
RUTHIE HENSHALL (Prince Edward)
Prince Edward adored the theatre, and it was no surprise he fell for journalist’s daughter and Cats star Ruthie Henshall, whom he dated for a number of years on and off, according to Ruthie, before meeting and marrying Sophie Rhys-Jones.
A five-times Olivier Awards nominee, Ruthie has had a long, varied and hugely successful career as an actress, singer and dancer, appearing on Broadway twice, and starring as Mrs Wilkinson for two years in the West End production of Billy Elliott The Musical.
ROSE FARQUHAR (Prince William)
A friend since childhood of Prince William, she received a BBC Fame Academy Award to study acting in New York, but after appearing on The Voice things went quiet for Rose.
The daughter of the master of the Beaufort Hunt, she had a romance with William in the summer of 2000, getting caught with him in a field by a farmer on the Highgrove Estate. ‘It was a very sweet and innocent love affair and Rose still laughs about the time they got caught,’ writes William’s biographer Katie Nicholl. Later was a location co-ordinator for Duran Duran.
CRESSIDA BONAS (Prince Harry)
This budding actress was introduced to Prince Harry in May 2012 by Princess Eugenie.
The blonde aristocrat had a two-year romance with the Prince after his six-year on-off relationship with Chelsy Davy.
Daughter of famed society beauty Lady Mary Gaye Curzon, she acted at school before landing her first London part at the Leicester Square Theatre in 2015.
She returned to the West End to play the female lead in the musical Gatsby. In 2020 she played Sheila Caffell in White House Farm, a crime drama mini-series for ITV, and in 2024 starred in the film Touchdown.
