Birth Date: 28th December 1934
Death Date: 27th September 2024
Few actors can boast of establishing a reputation in revue, giving remarkable performances in the works of Shakespeare and Ibsen, accumulating two Oscars and numerous theatre accolades, and maintaining a consistent audience draw over six decades. However, the extraordinary Dame Maggie Smith achieved all of this before her demise at the age of 89.
She was versatile in her acting talent, with her repertoire ranging from the grand elegance of Restoration comedy to the poignant, suburban characters crafted by Alan Bennett. Regardless of her role, she acted with a blend of wit and an often biting sense of humour. Her comedy was driven by her anxiety, and her knack for appropriate gestures was unerring.
Her excellence in acting was first globally recognised when she won an Oscar for her remarkable portrayal in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969). Smith’s dominance became apparent in her later years when she starred in two globally successful projects. She portrayed the esteemed Professor Minerva McGonagall in the eight-part Harry Potter film series (recalling her role as akin to Miss Brodie in a wizard’s cap) from 2001 to 2011. From 2010 to 2015, she captivated audiences worldwide in the six-season run of Downton Abbey on ITV television (broadcast in 250 locations worldwide), playing the stern and sharp-tongued Dowager Countess of Grantham, Lady Violet. This character, who seemed to have a stony heart, was humanised by an ethical outlook and a somewhat exaggerated adherence to traditional social norms.
From the outset, Smith earned a reputation for her quick-wittedness, as one critic amusingly noted. Harold Clurman, a well-known American director and author, pointed out her unique quality of “thinking funny”. Her acting approach was more taut and tuned in comparison to her contemporaries, and she had a strong inclination towards improvisation, which made her reluctant to discuss her craft, despite her meticulous preparation process. Preferring to steer clear of the glamour and fame, Smith seldom attended TV talk shows — her guesting on The Graham Norton Show on BBC TV in 2015 marked her first appearance in this kind of format in over four decades — nor did she entertain regular newspaper interviews.
To sum up her life, she said, “One attended school, aspired to act, embarked on acting, and continues acting.” This was her life in a nutshell.
Unlike her great companion and fellow actor Judi Dench, she established herself as a star on both sides of the Atlantic quite early on, making her first Broadway appearance in 1956 and becoming an original contract artist amongst the first 12 in Laurence Olivier’s National Theatre in 1963.
In 1969, she stepped out of the shadows of others’ films and claimed her rightful place amongst the industry’s elite with “Miss Brodie”, becoming a star in her own right. Smith had already shared stages with industry heavyweights like Olivier, Orson Welles and Noël Coward, amongst others, including her close friend and fellow thespian Kenneth Williams, in a West End revue. Her performances in two international films, “The VIPs” directed by Anthony Asquith in 1963 — which led her co-actor Richard Burton to complain that she did more than just outshine him, she practically marred him, and “The Pumpkin Eater” in 1964, directed by Jack Clayton with a screenplay by Harold Pinter, created a significant stir.
Her character Constance Trentham’s gloomy comment in Robert Altman’s 2001 movie Gosford Park — considered a template for Downton Abbey and penned by Julian Fellowes — as Jeremy Northam’s character Ivor Novello completed his song and bowed, was amongst the movie’s highlight comedic moments. “Don’t encourage him” she suggested, with a hint of dry wit, “he’s got a very extended repertoire.”
Maggie Smith was born in Ilford, Essex, the offspring of Nathaniel Smith and Margaret Hutton. She went to Oxford high school for girls and later affiliated with the prestigious Oxford Playhouse school in 1951 under the guidance of Frank Shelley, where her talents shined in graduate and professional enactments. Maggie was pursued passionately by Beverley Cross, a writer from Oxford, who eventually married her after she broke up with her long-term partner, Robert Stephens, a renowned actor she married in 1967.
Her time with Stephens produced two sons, Chris and Toby, both of whom embraced acting. Following their split in 1975 that occurred after their performance in Coward’s Private Lives got mixed responses, Maggie moved to Canada where she married her persistent lover, Cross, and sought to re-establish her career.
She brought to life characters such as Rosalind, Lady Macbeth and Cleopatra on the Ontario stage to raving reviews, whilst also featuring as Judith Bliss in Coward’s Hay Fever and Millamant in William Congreve’s The Way of the World, a character she reprised successfully in Chichester and London during 1984. Her filmography of this period includes noteworthy comedies like Neil Simon’s California Suite (1978) which saw her star alongside Michael Caine, bagging her a second Oscar for her role as Diana Barrie, an actress attending the Oscars.
Smith’s comedic brilliance often shone through narratives encompassing melancholy, solitude, and withdrawal. This is most evident in arguably her most outstanding cinematic performance in Clayton’s ‘The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne’ (1987). The film, based on Brian Moore’s inaugural novel, traces the collapse of a guilt-ridden Catholic single woman struggling with her own sensuality amidst her alcoholism.
Her comic performances also encapsulated tragic elements, observable in her theatrical roles as well, such as haunting depiction of Virginia Woolf in Edna O’Brien’s ‘Virginia’ (1980), and the eccentric vagabond Miss Shepherd in Bennett’s ‘The Lady in the Van’ (1999).
Smith had two noteworthy triumphs in Edward Albee’s plays on London’s stages in the 1990s: as part of the comeback play ‘Three Tall Women’ (1994), and then ‘A Delicate Balance’ (1997), where she starred with Eileen Atkins, who, like Dench, was every bit Smith’s theatric equal.
Although collaboration between Dench and Smith grew sparse following their early days together at Old Vic, they compensated for the lost years by not only appearing together in stage productions like David Hare’s ‘The Breath of Life’ (2002) – depicting the mistress and wife of a deceased man, but also in films such as ‘A Room With a View’ (1985) and ‘Tea With Mussolini’ (1999). They even starred as elderly sisters in Charles Dance’s directorial debut, Ladies in Lavender (2004), wittily referred to by Smith as “The Lavender Bags.”
Smith had a knack for bestowing affectionate nicknames upon her co-stars; she referred to Vanessa Redgrave as “the Red Snapper”, while Michael Palin earned the title “the Saint”.
Her esteemed role as the Mother Superior in the highly-acclaimed Sister Act (1992) along with its sequel is well remembered, as are her recent cinematic roles such as Keeping Mum (2005), the TV-drama Capturing Mary by Stephen Poliakoff (2007), and Fellowes’s From Time to Time (2009). During the release of the latter, she disclosed her battle with breast cancer and her journey through an arduous round of chemotherapy. Despite achieving a clean bill of health, she was afflicted with a severe shingle outbreak, a bitter sweet moment synonymous with her life’s pattern.
Smith graced the theatre stage for the final time in 2019, in the one-woman show A German Life penned by Christopher Hampton, where she portrayed Brunhilde Pomsel at the Bridge Theatre in London.
Cross, her steadfast shield against the world, died in 1998. Nonetheless, Smith stood her ground and continued enchanting the world with her performances much as she had throughout her career. This included unforgettable roles in the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel films (2011 and 2015), and the recent Downton Abbey film adaptations (2019 and 2022). Her final act on the silver screen was in The Miracle Club (2023), a collaboration with Kathy Bates and Laura Linney.
Maggie Smith’s absence, with her habitual recoiling mockery and genuine distaste, will reshape our world. She’s left behind her sons, Chris and Toby, and five grandchildren.