Maggie Smith, the renowned and Oscar winning actress known for her diverse roles spanning from The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie to Harry Potter and Downton Abbey, has passed away at the age of 89. The sad news was confirmed by her sons, Chris Larkin and Toby Stephens, who issued a statement saying, “She passed away peacefully in hospital early this morning, Friday 27th September.
“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. We would like to take this opportunity to thank the wonderful staff at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital for their care and unstinting kindness during her final days. We thank you for all your kind messages and support and ask that you respect our privacy at this time.”
Smith’s remarkable talent for sharp-witted comedy was a hallmark of her most celebrated roles, including the acerbic teacher Jean Brodie, for which she won an Oscar. She featured in notable period dramas such as A Room With a View and Gosford Park, and enjoyed a series of collaborations with playwright Alan Bennett, including The Lady in the Van. Reflecting on her career in a 2004 interview with The Guardian, she remarked, “My career is chequered. I think I got pigeonholed in humour … If you do comedy, you kind of don’t count. Comedy is never considered the real thing.” Despite this, Smith excelled in serious dramatic roles as well, performing alongside Laurence Olivier at the National Theatre, winning a BAFTA for Best Actress in The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne, and taking the lead in Ingmar Bergman’s 1970 production of Hedda Gabler.
Born in 1934, Smith grew up in Oxford and began her acting career as a teenager at the city’s Playhouse theatre. While appearing in various stage productions, including Bamber Gascoigne’s 1957 musical comedy Share My Lettuce alongside Kenneth Williams, she also made her mark in film, garnering attention with her performance in the 1958 thriller Nowhere to Go, which earned her a BAFTA nomination for Best Supporting Actress. Following her role in Peter Shaffer’s double bill The Private Ear and The Public Eye, she was invited by Olivier to join the newly established National Theatre company in 1962. There, she appeared in a range of productions, including as Desdemona opposite Olivier’s Othello in his controversial blackface interpretation in 1964, a role she reprised in the film adaptation the following year, earning both actors an Oscar nomination.
In 1969, Smith took on the lead role in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, the film adaptation of Muriel Spark’s novel about an Edinburgh schoolteacher with a controversial admiration for Mussolini. For this role, she won the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1970. Later that same year, she starred in Bergman’s production of Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler at the National Theatre in London’s West End. Milton Shulman of the Evening Standard described her performance as one that “haunt[ed] the stage like some giant portrait by Modigliani, her alabaster skin stretched tight with hidden anguish.” Smith received another Oscar nomination for Best Actress in 1973 for Travels with My Aunt, and won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in 1979 for her role as an Oscar-nominated film star in California Suite, a film written by Neil Simon.
Throughout the 1980s, Smith maintained her successful dual careers in film and theatre. She starred alongside Michael Palin in A Private Function, a comedy set during wartime food rationing co-scripted by Alan Bennett. In A Room With a View, she played the gossipy cousin Charlotte Bartlett, earning yet another Oscar nomination. She continued to shine on stage as Virginia Woolf in Edna O’Brien’s 1980 play at the Stratford Festival in Canada and as the tour guide Lettice Douffet in Peter Shaffer’s Lettice and Lovage in 1987. Additionally, she reunited with Bennett for his Talking Heads series, both on radio and television, portraying a vicar’s wife engaged in an affair.
Smith’s film career continued to flourish with notable performances alongside Joan Plowright and Cher in Franco Zeffirelli’s Tea With Mussolini, as a dowager countess in Robert Altman’s Gosford Park, and opposite Judi Dench in Ladies in Lavender, written and directed by Charles Dance. She famously took on the role of Minerva McGonagall in the Harry Potter film series, appearing in every instalment from 2001 to 2011, with the exception of Deathly Hallows Part 1. Perhaps one of her most significant television roles was as the Countess of Grantham in Downton Abbey, a series created by Gosford Park writer Julian Fellowes. She reprised this role in two standalone films released in 2019 and 2022. Following her stage portrayal in 1999, Smith enjoyed a late-career triumph in The Lady in the Van, a poignant memoir by Alan Bennett about a woman who lived on his driveway.
Smith was married twice: first to fellow actor Robert Stephens from 1967 to 1975, and later to playwright Beverley Cross from 1975 until his death in 1998.
