With so many exceptional roles Dame Maggie Smith was a powerhouse performer on stage and screen with perhaps her defining role being The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie that bought her international acclaim and an Oscar
Born 28th December 1934 in Ilford, Essex the family moved to Oxford where she went to an all Girls High School deciding early on that she wanted to be an actress joining an Oxford playhouse in 1951 she appeared in a number of roles under the name Margaret Smith until 1956 when Equity told her they already had an actress with that name. Her theatre work saw her spotted by critics and bought to the attention of revered theatre director Peter Hall.
Smith developed a stormy relationship with the actor Robert Stephens when they worked at the National Theatre and who she would marry in 1967. It was here that she would play opposite some of the UKs greatest actors including Olivier to great acclaim. Her marriage to Stephens saw them have two sons who both became actors. She was now starring in films and 1969 saw her take the lead in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969). She was phenomenal in the role of a Scottish schoolteacher with extravagantly romantic ideas about life and love overly keen to impress her young pupils and bring her into direct conflict with her school’s conservative headmistress, Miss MacKay. So good was she that it won her a Best Actress Oscar over Jane Fonda, Liza Minnelli, Jean Simmons and Genevieve Bujold who had also been nominated. Smith would be nominated again in 1973 for ‘Travels with my Aunt’ though this time she would lose out to Liza Minnelli.
By 1975 her marriage to Stephens came to an acrimonious end and she moved to Canada and soon married screenwriter Beverley Cross. Her relocation to Canada saw her work in theatre there but it also saw her able to take roles in Hollywood films. What was increasingly coming to notice was her flair for comedy and her role in Neil Simon’s California Suite in 1978 saw her Oscar nominated and winning for the second time and last time.
As her career progressed she would appear opposite Monty Python tar Michael Palin in 1984’s excellent Alan Bennet scripted, ‘A Private Function’ after 1982’s ‘The Missionary’ and she gave him the moniker, ‘the saint’ for his patience. Smith’s excellence at comedy would continue in the far broader ‘Sister Act’ (1992)
She and Judi Dench had formed a great friendship from their days at the Old Vic and the 1980’s saw them reunite in Merchant-Ivory’s ‘A Room with a View’ (for which she received an Oscar nomination) and they would later appear together in ‘The Breath of Life (2002), ‘Tea with Mussolini’ (1999) and Ladies in Lavender (2004).
1998 saw her husband pass away when she had been working on a TV version of David Copperfield and she took a brief hiatus returning in the first of the Harry Potter films that would go on to feature just about every great British actor as the franchise progressed. But by 2009 she was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent intense and successful
course of chemo therapy. But having been given the all clear she was struck down by shingles. After this she took the role for which she was perhaps most fondly remembered in the hit TV series Downton Abbey as the acerbic dowager Countess of Grantham plus two subsequent cinema films.
Her career saw her Oscar nominated further for Robert Altman’s ‘Gosford Park (2002) in a role that was a precursor to that in Downton Abbey and Maggie Smith had 15 BAFTA nominations for which she won seven including the BAFTA Fellowship and Special Lifetime Acheivement. Her career had seen her appear in so mamy highly regarded films and TV series that included The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, Hook, Oh What a Lovely War and Alan Bennet’s Talking Heads and also The Lady in the Van both on stage and on screen and her last film would be the yet to be released, ‘A German Life’.
Beside an Oscar 1970 had seen her also made a CBE and twenty years later in 1990 she was made a Dame and 2014, a Companion of Honour.
Dame Maggie Smith died 27th September 2024 aged 89 years of age
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