Charles Dance puts his arm around his Italian film producer girlfriend Alessandra Masi

They met in 2018 but went public with their romance last September. 

And actor Charles Dance, 74, and his Italian film producer girlfriend Alessandra Masi, 54, looked very loved up when they stepped out in London. 

The Crown star, Charles tenderly placed his arm around Alessandra as they picked up some groceries from Fam market in north London, wearing matching face masks.

The chemistry between the pair was clear to see as they gazed up at one another during their chilly walk in the capital. 

Dapper Charles was dressed casually for the outing wearing a navy fleece, jeans and brown shoes as the pair got into a black cab to complete their journey. 

Alessandra wore a purple skirt with leather boots and a navy suede coat as she nestled into her partner. 

The couple went public during a romantic trip to Venice together last year, when they were pictured kissing in the sea amid the 77th Film Festival. 

The couple met three years ago, when he acted in art movie The Book Of Vision, which opened at the Venice film festival. Alessandra was the unit production manager and the film was principally shot in Italy.

She was then been hired to work on his next film The Inn At The Edge of the World, an adaptation of the Alice Thomas Ellis book about an unrelated group who answer an advert and go to a remote Scottish island to escape Christmas.

The actor will direct as well as star in that film, alongside Joanna Lumley and Freddie Fox. 

Alessandra, who comes from Bologna, has a degree in film from Bologna University and has been working in the movies for nearly three decades.

In an interview last year Dance – who plays Lord Mountbatten in The Crown – said the end of his marriage to Joanna Haythorn had been a matter of great sadness. 

‘I regret that the marriage ended; it was largely my fault. But sensibly, we’re now the best of friends,’ he said. 

He told another interviewer that he had not been ‘the greatest husband in the world’ to Jo, whom he met when he was 19.

Before their split was announced he was linked to actress Emilia Fox. Then came a relationship with actress Sophia Myles, 33 years his junior; they dated from 2003 to 2005.

Next he dated model Shambhala Marthe, 26 years his junior, whom he met in a fruit and veg market. She was succeeded in his affections by painter Eleanor Boorman, by whom he had a daughter, Rose, when he was 65.

Miss Boorman is 25 years his junior and they split in 2012 soon after the baby arrived.

He told an interviewer in 2019 that he likes ‘beautiful women’ and added: ‘I like independence, I like strong women, women who survive and thrive in what is still a male-dominated world in most professions. I think that description fits my ex-wife and my former fiancée, Eleanor.’