LONDON (AP) — Maggie SmithThe A brilliant, scene-stealing actor She won an Oscar for the 1969 film “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie” and gained new fans as the Dowager Countess of Grantham in the 21st century. Downton Abbey” and Professor Minerva McGonagall of the Harry Potter films died on Friday. She is 89 years old.
Smith’s sons, Chris Larkin and Toby Stephens, said in a statement that Smith died early Friday morning at a London hospital.
“He leaves two sons and five loving grandchildren who are devastated by the loss of his extraordinary mother and grandmother,” they said in a statement released by publicist Clare Dobbs.
Smith is often rated as the leading British actress of a generation that included Vanessa Redgrave and Judi Dench, with two Oscars, a clutch of Academy Award nominations and a wardrobe of acting trophies.
Even in her later years she was in demand, though she lamented, “When you get to grandma’s age, you’re lucky to have anything.”
Smith summed up his later roles as “a rogue’s gallery”, including Professor McGonagall. Asked why he took on the role, he joked, “Harry Potter is my pension.”
Richard Eyre, who directed Smith in the TV production of “Suddenly, Last Summer,” said, “Intellectually she’s the smartest actress I’ve ever worked with. You have to get up very, very early to surpass Maggie Smith.
“Jean Brody”, in which she played a dangerously attractive Edinburgh school teacher, brought her an Academy Award for Best Actress and a British Academy Film Award (BAFTA).
Smith won supporting actress Oscars for “California Suite” in 1978, Golden Globes for “California Suite” and “A Room with a View,” and BAFTAs for leading actress in 1984 for “A Private Function” and “A Room with a View.” ” in 1986, and “The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne” in 1988.
She received Academy Award nominations for supporting actress in “Othello”, “Travels with My Aunt”, “Room with a View” and “Gosford Park”, and a BAFTA Award for supporting actress in “Tea with Mussolini”. On stage, he won a Tony in 1990 for “Lettice and Lovage.”
Since 2010, she has played the acid-tongued Violet Crawley, Dowager Countess of Grantham, in the hit TV period drama ” Downton Abbey,” His legion of fans won him three Emmy Awards, a Golden Globe and many other award nominations.
He continued to excel in his 80s with films like “Daunton Abbey: A New Era” in 2022 and “The Miracle Club” in 2023.
Smith had a reputation for being tough and sometimes lifting others up.
Richard Burton noted that Smith didn’t just take one scene in “The VIPs”: “She’s doing great stealth.” However, director Peter Hall said that Smith “isn’t very tough unless he’s among idiots. She’s very hard on herself, and I don’t think she sees any reason why she shouldn’t be hard on others.
Smith admits he can be impatient at times.
“It’s true that I don’t tolerate fools, but they don’t tolerate me, so I’m sharp,” Smith said. “Maybe that’s why I’m so good at playing spiky old ladies.”
Critic Frank Rich, in a New York Times review of “Lettice and Lovage,” wrote that Smith asked, “Don’t you have marmalade?’ praised as a stylistic classicist who can slant a line until it sounds like a freshly minted epigram from Coward or Wilde.”
“This haydock is disgusting” – Smith famously laughs in a 1964 revival of Noel Coward’s “Hay Fever”.
He repeated his gift for one-liners on “Downton Abbey,” when the traditional Violet asked, “What’s a weekend?”
fellow actors He paid tribute to her On Friday. Hugh Bonneville, who played Smith’s character’s son on “Downton Abbey,” said, “Anyone who has shared a scene with Maggie will attest to her sharp eye, sharp wit and formidable talent.”
“He is a true legend of his generation and will hopefully live on in many wonderful screen performances,” he said in a statement.
Rob Lowe, who co-starred with her in “Suddenly, Last Summer,” said, “Working with her was an unforgettable experience; sharing two shots was like pairing up with a lion.
“She could eat anybody alive, and often did. But fun and great company. And no fools were hurt. We’ll never see another. God speed, Mrs. Smith!” Lowe wrote in X.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer called Smith “a true national treasure whose work will be admired for generations”.
Margaret Natalie Smith was born on December 28, 1934 in Ilford, on the eastern edge of London. He summed up his career: “One went to school, one wanted to act, one started acting, one is still acting.”
His father was posted to Oxford for wartime duty in 1939, where his drama studies at the Oxford Playhouse School led to a busy apprenticeship.
“I did a lot of things, you know, around the universities there. … If you were smart enough, if you were quick enough, you could be a weekly representative because all the colleges were doing different preparations at different times,” he said in a BBC interview.
Another Margaret Smith took Maggie as her stage name because she was active in the theater.
Laurence Olivier recognized her talent and invited her to be part of his original National Theater Company, and cast her as his co-star in the 1965 film adaptation of “Othello.”
Smith said that Ingmar Bergman and William Caskill were two directors who had an important influence on National Theater productions.
Alan Bennett said he was wary of Smith’s reputation for being boring as he prepared to film the monologue “A Bed Among the Lentils”. As actor Jeremy Brett put it, “She starts out divine and then goes off like cheese.”
“So it was an absolute blessing that we only had enough time to do it, because she was so new and so passionate about it,” Bennett said. He wrote a major role for Smith in “The Lady in the Van,” Miss Shepherd, a suspicious woman who has lived for years in her vehicle in Bennett’s London driveway.
However he may have been on stage or in front of the cameras, Smith was known to be very private.
“She didn’t want to talk about acting. Acting was something she was afraid to talk about because if she did, it would disappear,” said Simon Callow, who starred with her in “One Room View.”
Smith was made A Dame Commander of the British Empire, In 1990 it was equivalent to a knight.
She married fellow actor Robert Stephens in 1967. They had two sons, Christopher and Toby – both of whom grew up to be actors – and divorced in 1975. In the same year he married writer Beverly Cross, who died in 1998.
___
Hilary Fox in London contributed to this story. Associated Press writer Robert Barr contributed biographical material to this obituary before his death in 2018.
