The British actress who could wither with a glance
Maggie Smith was one of the true grandes dames of stage and screen. Over a nearly seven-decade career, she electrified audiences on both sides of the Atlantic, winning two Oscars, a Tony, four Emmys, and five BAFTAs. Many of her signature roles dripped with sharp-tongued aristocratic superiority, whether she was playing Shakespearean and Restoration comedy heroines onstage, a stuffy Edwardian chaperone in the Merchant Ivory classic A Room With a View (1985), or the acerbic Lady Grantham in the 2010–2015 TV series Downton Abbey. That intimidating hauteur, her directors and fellow actors said, extended offstage. Smith, who was both shy and a perfectionist, admitted she could be prickly. “The awful thing is, I’m very aware when I’m being difficult,” she said in 2017, “but I’m usually so scared.”
Margaret Natalie Smith was raised near Oxford by “dour and withholding parents” who didn’t encourage theatrical ambitions, said The Washington Post. When she pursued acting anyway, she sought comedic roles to distract “from what she had been told by her mother and grandmother were her inadequate looks.” She first appeared in a 1956 Broadway revue then returned to London and in 1963 became a founding player in Laurence Olivier’s National Theatre. After a few small but memorable film roles, she “became a star in her own right” with The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969), said The Guardian (U.K.). Her “iconic performance” as a charismatic but lethally manipulative teacher won her an Academy Award; a decade later, she won another for playing a jittery actress on the eve of losing an Oscar in the Neil Simon comedy California Suite (1978).
Long known “mostly among theater and film cognoscenti,” said The New York Times, “she achieved global fame” in her 60s as Hogwarts’ firm but protective Professor Minerva McGonagall, appearing in seven of the eight Harry Potter movies from 2001 through 2011. She was suddenly recognized on the street by children. Soon after she’d also be stopped by their parents after starring as the “scene-stealing” dowager countess Lady Grantham in the British import Downton Abbey, said the Los Angeles Times. Millions tuned in to watch Smith deliver the countess’ barbs—“No Englishman would dream of dying in someone else’s house”—in the TV series and two films.
Despite a bout of breast cancer in the early 2000s, she continued to work, said The Times (U.K.), appearing in several films with her fellow Dame Judi Dench, and in a one-woman play as late as 2019. Acting, she said, was relaxing for her. “You know who you are for a bit. It’s quite a holiday, not having to fathom it out.” |