The incomparable Dame Maggie Smith, known for her myriad roles in film, TV, and onstage, died Friday, The Associated Press and CBS reported, citing her publicist. She was 89.
Maggie Smith was born Margaret Natalie Smith on Dec. 28, 1934, in Ilford, England, to Nathaniel and Margaret Smith. When she was 4, her family, including her older twin brothers Alistair and Ian, moved to Oxford, where Smith’s father worked as a public health pathologist at the university. Smith attended Oxford High School until she was 16, when she left to study acting at the Oxford Playhouse.
The freckle-faced redhead began her career at the Playhouse in 1952, transforming for roles including Viola in “The Twelfth Night.” In 1956, she made her film and Broadway debuts, appearing as one of the party guests in the movie “Child in the House” and playing several roles in the review “New Faces of ’56” at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre in New York City.
“There was one very famous one, which was the one with Eartha Kitt. And I think everybody who was in it thought they were all going to be Eartha Kitt or be big stars,” Smith told NPR of starring in “New Faces.” “That didn’t happen, but it was a wake-up call to have one’s first professional job on Broadway, I must say.”
Throughout her over-60-year career, Smith starred in more than 80 films and TV series and appeared in dozens of plays, including four on Broadway.
Smith starred in movies including “Othello” (1965), “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie” (1969), “Clash of the Titans” (1981), “The Secret Garden” (1993), “Gosford Park” (2001), “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” (2012) and “The Lady in the Van” (2015). She won a Best Actress Oscar for “Jean Brodie” and a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for “California Suite” (1978). She also won five BAFTAs, four Emmys, three Golden Globes and a Tony award.
In recent years, Smith was well-known for her portrayal of Violet Crawley in the “Downton Abbey” TV series and movies, as well as her role as Professor McGonagall in the “Harry Potter” film franchise, which was beloved by many, including herself.
“It’s been sad thinking about it because of Alan Rickman,” Smith told NPR following Rickman’s death in 2016. “He was such a terrific actor, and that was such a terrific character that he played. And it was a joy to be with him. We used to laugh together because we ran out of reaction shots. They were always — when everything had been done and the children were finished, they would turn the camera around and we’d have to do various reaction shots of amazement or sadness and things. And we used to say we’d got to about number 200-and-something and we’d run out of knowing what to do when the camera came around on us. But he was a joy.”
While speaking with The Standard about the deaths of Rickman and Frank Finlay, whom she starred alongside in “Othello,” Smith said, “You get a bit wobbly, you know, when you get to a certain age. [Mortality] seems to be too near.”
Smith has two sons, Chris Larkin and Toby Stephens, and multiple grandchildren.