Obituary: Maggie Smith

Dame Maggie Smith brought an incredible performance to her role, earning high praise from the director and fellow actors.

It is said that she never took a role lightly, often pacing back and forth during rehearsals while other actors were taking a break, reciting lines.

In a profession notorious for uncertainty, her career is renowned for its longevity.

She made her acting debut in 1952 and was still working six years later, going from aspiring star to national treasure.

Margaret Natalie Smith was born on 28 December 1934 in Ilford, Essex, the daughter of a pathologist.

As war approached, the family moved to Oxford, where young Maggie (as she was known from childhood) attended Oxford School for Girls.

She started out in the theater as a prompt girl and as an understudy with the Oxford Theater Company. She once claimed that she had never been on stage there because no one in the company had ever been sick.

In 1955, her company moved to a small theater in London, where she came to the attention of American producer Leonard Stillman, who cast her in a Broadway production in June 1956. The revue “New Faces.”

She was chosen from a field of unknown actors, and upon her return to London she was invited to star opposite Kenneth Williams in the revue Share My Lettuce for six months.

Her first film role was an uncredited role in the 1956 production of Child in the House.

Two years later, she received a BAFTA nomination for Best Newcomer in the 1958 melodrama Nowhere, in which she played a girl who shelters an escaped convict.

The Times, describing her role in the 1963 London hit “Mary Mary,” called her “the savior of this breezy Broadway comedy.”

She nearly stole Richard Burton’s thunder when she appeared in a key scene with the Welles star in The Guest.

One critic noted that “when Maggie Smith is on the screen, the frame moves,” and Burton later wryly described her stealing his spotlight as “grand larceny.”

Later in 1963 Laurence Olivier invited her to play Desdemona opposite his Othello at the National Theatre. Two years later, the play was made into a movie with the original cast, and Smith was nominated for an Academy Award.

In 1969, she played a determinedly non-conformist teacher in The Days of Miss Jane Brody, a role that brought her international fame.

The role earned her the Academy Award for Best Actress.

She is also married to her partner Robert Stephens.

The actress performed at the National Theater for another two years, including playing the sullen Madame in the Los Angeles Restoration comedy The Playboy Strategy.

In 1972, she played Aunt Augusta in George Cukor’s film “Traveling with My Aunt,” for which she was again nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress.

She and Stephens divorced in 1975, and a year later she married playwright Beverly Cross and moved to Canada, where she worked for four years in a theater company, starring in “Macbeth” and “Richard III.” played a more important role.

One critic, writing of her performance as Lady Macbeth, said that she “blends her vivid personality with her charming subject matter.”

Despite her success, she is modest about her achievements, simply stating that “one went to school, one wanted to act, one started acting, one is still acting.”

She continued to work in cinema, starring opposite Peter Ustinov in the 1978 film “Death on the Nile” and the same year playing Diana Barry in Neil Simon’s “Californication Suite”.

The 1980s saw many memorable film performances and further awards, including BAFTA Awards for Private Events and A Room with a View, the latter of which also earned her a Golden Globe Awards and Oscar nominations.

There were more BAFTA awards, first for her portrayal of an elderly alcoholic in Judith Hearn’s A Lonely Passion, and then for Alan Bennett’s production of Talking Tales for the BBC. One of the “Avatar” series, “The Bed Between Lentils”.

Lettice and Lovage returned to the stage in 1987 at London’s Globe Theatre, before the production moved to New York. But her run was cut short after she was involved in a cycling accident and learned she needed eye surgery.

When she finally resumed work on Lettice and Lovage after a 12-month break, her performance in New York won her a Tony Award.

In 1990 she was appointed DBE, and a year later she played the elderly Wendy in Hook, the sequel to Steven Spielberg’s Peter Pan.

Other films that followed include Sister Act with Whoopi Goldberg, and The Secret Garden, for which she was nominated for a BAFTA Award.

The new millennium saw BAFTA and Emmy nominations for the role of Betsey Trotwood in the BBC’s production of David Copperfield.

A year later, the average age of her fan base plummeted after she was cast as Professor McGonagall in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, a role she would reprise in all subsequent Potter films.

She was reportedly the only performer specifically requested by author J.K. Rowling to bring a bit of Miss Jean Brodie to Hogwarts.

In 2004, she starred in the tender drama The Lavender Lady alongside her old friend and compatriot Dame Judi Dench.

The New York Times commented that Smith and Dench “sleep into their roles like a house cat burrowing into a duvet on a stormy night.”

Two years later, she became the cash-strapped Countess of Trentham in Gosford Park, Robert Altman’s take on an English country house murder.

Her performance is a joy to watch, with an ostensibly snobbish undertone but a deft repression that can be seen in it, especially in Mr. Novello’s failed film.

When she starred in the ITV drama Downton Abbey, she arguably reprized the role in all but name. Her character’s name may have been changed to Countess of Grantham, but the performance is essentially similar.

“It’s true that I can’t tolerate fools, but they can’t tolerate me either, so I’m sharp,” she once said. “Maybe that’s why I’m so good at playing spiky old ladies.”

She remained with the cast of Downton Abbey until the show finally ended in 2015, reprising the role in two films in 2019 and 2022.

In 2007, while filming Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. After two years of treatment, she was in remission.

Despite feeling frail after the illness, she went on to star in the final Harry Potter film and was nominated for a Bafta for her role in the 2012 film The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.

In 2015, she gave a moving performance in the film “The Lady in the Van,” based on the true story of Mary Shepard. Len Bennett has lived in a dilapidated van on his driveway in London for 15 years.

She previously starred in a stage version of the story, for which she won an Olivier Award for Best Actress, and was adapted into Bennett’s play for BBC Radio 4 in 2009.

Mrs. Maggie rarely gave interviews, but she was once asked to define the appeal of a performance. “I love the ephemerality of theatre, how each performance is like a ghost – it’s there and then it’s gone.”