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The legendary British actress Dame Maggie Smith died on September 27 at the age of 89 after a stage, screen, and television career that spanned three-quarters of a century.
In recent years, Smith captivated a whole new generation of audiences with her roles as the Dowager Countess of Grantham in Downton Abbey and as the stern Professor Minerva McGonagall in eight Harry Potter films.
Born in Ilford, England on December 28, 1034. Smith made her acting debut in 1951 at the age of seventeen when she played Viola in a production of Twelfth Night at Oxford University. Five years later, she made her Broadway debut in Faces of ’56 at New York’s Ethel Barrymore Theatre. She appeared in three other Broadway shows, including Noel Coward’s Private Lives. Tom Stoppard’s Night and Day, and Peter Shaffer’s Lettuce and Lovage.
During her 75-year career, she won two Academy Awards, four Emmy Awards, three Golden Globe Awards, five BAFTA Awards and a Tony Award. Smith won her first Oscar in 1970 for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. She also appeared in several Agatha Christie film adaptations: Death on the Nile, with Bette Davis, Mia Farrow, Angela Lansbury, and Peter Ustinov; and Evil Under the Sun with Roddy McDowell, Sylvia Miles, and Diana Rigg. In the 1990s, she played the role of the stern Mother Superior in Sister Act and Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit.
On television, in addition to Downton Abbey, Smith appeared in Memento Mori, Suddenly Last Summer, All the King’s Men, My House in Umbria, Capturing Mary, and David Copperfield.
Smith’s biographer, the theater critic Michael Coveney described her as ‘“an old-fashioned star” in a New York Post interview in 2015, adding that “Her contract is with the audience, and that’s the end of it. She doesn’t do meet-and-greets. She doesn’t bother with the red carpet. And she cannot cope with this new celebrity she has from Downton Abbey. Somebody told her that her last birthday was tweeted 7 million times. She literally fell over.”
When news of her passing, tributes began pouring in from her colleagues. Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe paid tribute to her by stating, “She was a fierce intellect, a gloriously sharp tongue, could intimidate and charm in the same instant and was, as everyone will tell you, extremely funny. I will always consider myself amazingly lucky to have been able to work with her and to spend time around her on set. The word legend is overused but if it applies to anyone in our industry then it applies to her. Thank you Maggie.”
And Downton Abbey’s creator Julian Fellowes was quoted as saying that “Maggie Smith was a truly great actress and we were more than fortunate to be part of the last act in her stellar career. She was a joy to write for, subtle, many-layered, intelligent, funny and heart-breaking. Working with her has been the greatest privilege of my career, and I will never forget her.”
Smith married actor Robert Stephens in 1967. After divorcing Stephens she married writer Beverly Cross, who died in 1998. She is survived by two sons, actors Christopher Larkin and Toby Stephens, and grandchildren.
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