The film industry was viewed as disreputable when Asquith was young, and according to the actor Jonathan Cecil, a family friend, Asquith entered this profession in order to escape his background.[3] At the end of the 1920s, he began his career with the direction of four silent films, the last of which, A Cottage on Dartmoor, established his reputation with its meticulous and often emotionally moving frame composition.[1]Pygmalion (1938) was based on the George Bernard Shaw play featuring Leslie Howard and Wendy Hiller.
Asquith was an alcoholic and, according to actor Jonathan Cecil, a repressed homosexual. He died in 1968.[3] He was buried at All Saints Churchyard, Sutton Courtenay, Berkshire, England.[4]