27. September 2024
Maggie Smith was 89 years old © APA/Getty Images North America/EVAN AGOSTINI
She was a Dame of the British Empire, a fixture on the screen for decades and one of the island’s theater doyennes: Maggie Smith. Now the great actress, who became famous with the Agatha Christie adaptations “Death on the Nile” and “Evil Under the Sun” via “Harry Potter” and “Downton Abbey”, has died at the age of 89. This means that a quick-witted voice of world cinema has been silenced forever.
The London native has been extensively recognized for her career spanning over 70 years. Maggie Smith was one of the few actresses who have won all the important theater and film awards, sometimes multiple times: two Oscars, three Golden Globes, four Emmys and five Baftas can be found in the sharp-tongued artist’s list of awards. Despite her impressive filmography, Smith has made her mark in Hollywood history with two roles in particular: as Hogwarts deputy headmistress and Quidditch fan Professor McGonagall, she supported Harry Potter in the cinema series. And as Lady Violet Crawley, widowed Countess of Grantham in the nostalgic series “Downton Abbey,” which brought her into living rooms worldwide. She actually didn’t want to appear in the movie for the hit series “Downton Abbey” anymore – unless it started with her character’s funeral. “I could scrape and it would just start with my corpse,” she suggested casually to the screenwriter at the BFI and Radio Times Festival. Nothing came of it, and so part 2 of the cinema series even followed in 2022. Smith didn’t think much of her fame – until “Downton Abbey” she led a completely normal life. “Nobody knew who the hell I was,” she described at the festival. “I went to the theater, visited galleries, all alone.”
Maggie Smith was born on December 28, 1934 in Ilford, near London, but the family soon moved to Oxford, where her father had been offered a position at the university. Her Scottish mother worked as a secretary and discouraged her from becoming an actress for a long time. But Smith was already on stage at the age of 17 as Viola in Shakespeare’s “What You Want” at the Oxford Playhouse – the beginning of a successful stage career that would span over 70 years.
In 1963 she supported Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in the film drama “Hotel International”. Just two years later she was nominated for an Oscar when she played Desdemona opposite Laurence Olivier’s Othello. Many consider The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969) to be her best film. She received her first Oscar for the work at the age of 35. In 1979 the second Oscar was due for her supporting role in the drama “The Crazy California Hotel”. At the same time she shone on London’s West End and New York’s Broadway. In a rare interview, she explained why she prefers stage to film: “No two performances are exactly the same,” she told the Sunday Post.
She was later unforgettable in blockbusters such as Steven Spielberg’s Peter Pan version “Hook”, “Sister Act” and “The She-Devils’ Club”. In the pensioner comedy “Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” (2011) and its sequel, she fired off one line after another. With “The Lady in the Van” (2015) she once again demonstrated her great dramatic talent: the film adaptation of Alan Bennett’s friendship with a homeless woman who lived in her van in his driveway for 15 years.
Even breast cancer in 2008 only temporarily threw Maggie Smith off track. Despite this, she was filming the sixth Harry Potter film and announced: “Retirement is not an option. So I will continue to work with characters like Violet or other old boxes.”
