Dame Maggie Smith, the iconic British actress with a seven-decade-long career in stage and screen, died on Friday at the age of 89. Smith was known for her roles as Professor Minerva McGonagall in the ‘Harry Potter’ series and Violet Crawley in the television show ‘Downton Abbey’, as well as her Academy Award-winning performance in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.
Born in Ilford, Essex, on December 28, 1934, she gained international recognition early in her career and was regarded one of the last good actresses. Her children, Chris Larkin, known for ‘Widow Clicquot’, and ‘Die Another Day’ star Toby Stephens, confirmed her passing in a statement released this afternoon.
A Star Is Dead
X
“It is with great sadness we have to announce the death of Dame Maggie Smith,” her children said in a statement.
They added: “An intensely private person, she was with friends and family at the end. She leaves two sons and five loving grandchildren who are devastated by the loss of their extraordinary mother and grandmother.”
X
Smith was best known for her portrayal of the strict Professor McGonagall in the eight Harry Potter films and the sharp-tongued Dowager Countess of Grantham in Downton Abbey.
Following the conclusion of the widely praised TV period drama in 2015 after five seasons, Smith admitted in an interview with Graham Norton that she felt a sense of relief.
“By the time we were finished, she must’ve been 110,” Smith joked of her aging character. “She couldn’t go on and on and on. It didn’t make sense.”
X
The actress also confessed that she never watched the hugely popular series. “I’ve got the box set,” she said.
Despite never watching the series, Smith reprised her role as the sharp-tongued Violet Crawley in two successful films: Downton Abbey in 2019 and Downton Abbey: A New Era in 2022.
Beyond her roles in Downton Abbey and Harry Potter, the classically trained actress showcased incredible versatility, portraying everything from Shakespearean heroines to stern nuns.
A Career Worth Envying
Over her career, she earned two Academy Awards, four Emmy Awards, three Golden Globes, five BAFTAs, and a Tony Award.
X
Smith began her stage career at 17, playing Viola in a 1952 production of Twelfth Night in Oxford, England. Just five years later, she made her Broadway debut in Faces of ’56 at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre.
Over the next 34 years, Smith appeared in three additional Broadway productions, including Noël Coward’s Private Lives in 1975 and Lettice and Lovage in 1990.
A true lover of theater, she performed in numerous West End productions, spent eight years with Britain’s Royal National Theatre, and acted in Shakespeare plays at Canada’s Stratford Festival from 1976 to 1980.
On the silver screen, Smith won her first Oscar for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie in 1970. She also appeared in several notable films, including two Agatha Christie adaptations: 1978’s Death on the Nile, alongside Peter Ustinov, Angela Lansbury, Bette Davis, and Mia Farrow, and 1982’s Evil Under the Sun, with Diana Rigg, Roddy McDowall, and Sylvia Miles.
In the 1990s and early 2000s, Smith took on a series of beloved character roles, including the steadfast Mother Superior in Sister Act and Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit, socialite Gunilla in The First Wives Club, and Constance in Gosford Park, another Dowager Countess role.
During the filming of Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince in the 2000s, Smith was treated for breast cancer. The physically draining experience of battling illness while working led her to retire from performing on stage. “It leaves you so flattened,” she told The Times of London in 2009.
X
However, Smith couldn’t resist the pull of the stage and made a return in 2019, starring in A German Life at the Bridge Theatre in London.
Though deeply committed to her craft, Smith always avoided the limelight. “She’s an old-fashioned star,” her biographer, theater critic Michael Coveney, told The Post in 2015.
“Her contract is with the audience, and that’s the end of it. She doesn’t do meet-and-greets. She doesn’t bother with the red carpet. And she cannot cope with this new celebrity she has from ‘Downton Abbey.’ Somebody told her that her last birthday was tweeted 7 million times. She literally fell over.”
