Michael Denison

From the start of their marriage they were comfortable playing opposite each other and it was with the films My Brother Jonathan and The Glass Mountain that they became internationally famous as a couple.

Among the parts he became renowned for were those poised and utterly English roles such as Jeeves and the television characters of Boyd QC and Captain Percival in The Cold Warrior.

Born John Michael Terence Wellesley Denison in 1915, his mother died when he was just three weeks' old. He was brought up by an aunt and uncle and never met his father until he was a grown man about to go off to the Middle East during the Second World War. After their first meeting in a City pub they became quite close.

He was sent to Harrow where he fagged for Terence Rattigan, who, although a ''humane fagmaster'', was not a theatrical influence on him.

At school he enjoyed acting and played many female roles until his voice broke in the middle of School for Scandal. However, his interest was rekindled while he was at Oxford where he read modern languages.

It was a time when professional directors and actresses were working with undergraduates. Denison was given a small role in Richard II directed by John Gielgud and with Vivien Leigh as the Queen. The costumes were designed by the famous team of three girls known as Motley.

He was enthralled at working with the very best of the profession and from then on he was adamant that he would become an actor - greatly to his uncle's horror.

He enrolled at the Webber-Douglas drama school where he met and fell in love with fellow student Dulcie Gray.

They married in 1939 when he was working in his first West End play - she was 19 and he was 23, earning just #2 17s 6d.

Shortly after they married they joined a repertory company in Aberdeen where they were cast in the juvenile leads opposite each other as the director, unaware that they were married, thought they made a good team.

However, with the outbreak of war, Denison had to put his acting career to one side and served as a captain in military intelligence. He always regretted that the disruption to his career during his 20s meant he lost his opportunity to establish himself as a classical actor.

Meanwhile, Dulcie was already established as a film star while he was relatively unknown. During a short leave in 1942 he escorted her to a film test for which she had to do a love scene. He offered to stand in for the role of her loved one and the five other women being tested asked him to do the same for them.

Luckily for him the film company, Associated British Pictures, liked him as well as Dulcie and gave him a seven-year contract.

Five years later My Brother Jonathan was released. It was the first time they were seen on screen together and the film was an instant box-office hit.

It was followed up the next year with another film success together, The Glass Mountain. For about 10 years they were in constant demand together - but just when they felt the public might tire of the partnership, Denison started making the TV series Boyd QC, while Dulcie took on roles on her own.

The television series ran from 1957 to 1963 by which time he became a household name. In between filming he also did a three-month tour to Australia in My Fair Lady, followed by

plays in Hong Kong and the Berlin Festival.

After about three years apart professionally, they gradually began to do the odd play and television drama together again. Neither of them was ever out of work for long and between them they appeared in 90 plays, almost 30 of those together.

Denison regretted his lack of a grounding in the classics during his 20s but it did not deter him from performing to general acclaim in many of ''the great works'' in later years.

Even without that early apprenticeship he was appreciated for his ability as an actor. That unaffected courtesy that was an essential part of him was by no means a sign of uncertainty, for he was a thoroughly confident professional - so much so that in 1971 he became a director in the New Shakespeare Company.

Denison also served on the Council of British Actors Equity Association from 1949 to 1976 and was a member of the Arts Council Drama Panel between 1975 and 1978. It was due to his contributions to the theatrical world that he received a CBE in 119983. Dulcie also received a CBE.

It was in the late seventies that Denison took on the role of Captain Percival in the television spy series that seemed tailor-made for him, The Cold Warrior.

They lived for many years at Regents Park and then had a country house in Buckinghamshire.

Over the years Dulcie built up a considerable reputation as a crime novel writer and in 1964 they worked together on a book, The Actor and His World.

In 1973 he wrote Overture and Beginners, in which he recounted both his and his wife's early lives. He followed it up with a second volume, Double Act in 119985.