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A legend of British stage and screen, she won two Oscars during her career - for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie in 1970 and California Suite in 1979.
She had four other nominations, and received eight Bafta awards.
In the Harry Potter films, Dame Maggie played the acerbic Professor Minerva McGonagall, famous for her pointed witch’s hat and stern manner with the young wizards at Hogwarts.
In hit ITV drama Downton Abbey, she played Violet Crawley, the Dowager Countess of Grantham, the grand matriarch who excelled at withering one-liners through the show’s six series.
I absolutely remember her in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, which came out the year I graduated from college.
Little girls! I am in the business of putting old heads on young shoulders, and all my pupils are the creme de la creme. Give me a girl at an impressionable age and she is mine for life. You girls are my vocation. If I were to receive a proposal of marriage tomorrow from the Lord Lyon, King of Arms, I would decline it. I am dedicated to you in my prime.
Dame Maggie, you stayed in your prime for a very long time. Godspeed.
RIP. What a delightful actress. I think I read that she didn’t really enjoy her Downton Abbey fame; prior to that show she could still go around in public without attracting much attention, but not afterwards.
She was on Carol Burnett several times, most memorably as Eunice’s son’s teacher, but here’s a fun song-and-dance number:
Celebrity deaths rarely register on my radar but this one definitely has. Maggie Smith was absolutely wonderful in everything she appeared in.
She was in the mostly forgotten but great The Missionary with Michael Palin and Trevor Howard which, interestingly enough, was filmed at Highclere Castle – the same filming location as Downton Abbey some 30 years later.
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is on my TBW list. Maybe I’ll try to check that one off this weekend.
I just loved her. I was a latecomer to her talents. She didn’t ping my radar until her middle years, but once I discovered her, I made it a point to see everything of hers I could.
Her comic timing was brilliant and I loved that about her. And she personified civility, a rare quality these days.
Travels with My Aunt (1972) is one movie i have a special fondness for. I read the book the movie was based on by Graham Greene several times, and i felt that the film captured the essense and comedy of the book. Maggie was excellent. funny and pretty. Louis Gossett Jr. as the perfect valor/lover? of Maggies character, and their togetherness of being narcotics smugglers. Maggies naive nephew played by Alec McCowen was also perfectly acted with wit and comedy and, as i said naivete.
I remember her from California Suite. She plays an English actress who is in Los Angeles to attend the Oscars, but she doesn’t win. She won an Oscar for the role.
She was brilliant in Murder By Death. In a cast of comedy greats, she has a couple of the best moments.
She was wonderfully catty in one of my favorite films, Gosford Park. There’s a scene where one Downstairs person tips a cup of coffee onto someone’s lap (deservedly so), and Smith’s giggles are so perfect over it – makes me laugh to remember the performance!
I loved that bit. Partly because the character was really befuddled; she had never worked a normal workweek so the concept of a weekend was so utterly foreign to her.
Another movie I liked her in was The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and its sequel, in which a group of Brit pensioners move to a retirement hotel in India, run by Dev Patel’s character. Lots of fun if you like seeing movies with her, Penelope Wilton, Judi Dench and others. There was also Quartet, directed by Dustin Hoffman.
