Award-winning iconic British actress Maggie Smith dies at 89

Dame Margaret Natalie Smith, the masterful, scene-stealing actor who won an Oscar for the 1969 film “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie” has died at 89.

Smith's sons, Chris Larkin and Toby Stephens, said in a statement on Friday that Smith died early that morning in a London hospital.

“She leaves two sons and five loving grandchildren who are devastated by the loss of their extraordinary mother and grandmother,” they said in a statement issued through publicist Clair Dobbs.

Smith was frequently rated the preeminent British female performer of a generation that included Vanessa Redgrave and Judi Dench, with a clutch of Academy Award nominations and a shelf full of acting trophies.

She remained in demand even in her later years, despite her lament that “when you get into the granny era, you’re lucky to get anything.”

Smith drily summarised her later roles as “a gallery of grotesques,” including Professor McGonagall. Asked why she took the role, she quipped: “Harry Potter is my pension.”

Richard Eyre, who directed Smith in a television production of “Suddenly Last Summer,” said she was “intellectually the smartest actress I’ve ever worked with. You have to get up very, very early in the morning to outwit Maggie Smith.”

"Jean Brodie," in which she played a dangerously charismatic Edinburgh schoolteacher, brought her the Academy Award for best actress, and the British Academy Film Award (BAFTA) as well.

Smith added a supporting actress Oscar for “California Suite” in 1978, Golden Globes for “California Suite” and “Room with a View,” and BAFTAs for lead actress in “A Private Function” in 1984, “A Room with a View” in 1986, and “The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne” in 1988.

She also received Academy Award nominations as a supporting actress in “Othello,” “Travels with My Aunt,” “Room with a View” and “Gosford Park, ” and a BAFTA award for supporting actress in “Tea with Mussolini.” On stage, she won a Tony in 1990 for “Lettice and Lovage.”

From 2010, she was the acid-tongued Violet Crawley, Dowager Countess of Grantham, in the hit TV period drama “ Downton Abbey,” a role that won her legions of fans, three Emmy Awards, a Golden Globe and a host of other awards nominations.

She continued acting well into her 80s, in films such a 2022 big-screen spinoff “Downton Abbey: A New Era” and 2023 release "The Miracle Club."

___

Source: TRT