Maggie Smith, actress, 1934-2024

It is a testament to Dame Maggie Smith’s long, varied and celebrated career that it would be insulting to single out a defining role. In fact, it is simplistic to consider only one particular media.

For movie buffs, there’s his Oscar-winning performance in Miss Jean Brodie’s first (1969). For those who grew up in the 2000s Harry PotterSmith, who has died aged 89, will always be Professor Minerva McGonagall.

On the small screen she looked through Downton Abbey as the indomitable grandmother of a thousand memes, Violet Crawley, Dowager Countess of Grantham.

But many would argue that it was in the theater that this most versatile of performers demonstrated a complete mastery that captivated critics and audiences alike, with playwrights crafting their work specifically for her and their male counterparts cowering behind the scenes.

This versatility has led to him winning a small mountain of acting awards, including two Oscars, four Emmys and a Tony – the so-called Triple Crown – as well as Golden Globes and Baftas.

Born in Ilford, Essex in 1934, she grew up in Oxford where, at the age of 17, she made her stage debut playing viola in Twelfth night and his professional Broadway debut four years later in 1956.

As Smith herself put it succinctly: “We went to school, we wanted to play, we started playing and we continue to play. » Showing a particular talent for comedy, she appeared in revues and farces, before catching the eye of Sir Laurence Olivier, who recruited her to the National Theater, where she quickly established herself as his peer, even her rival.

Her range saw her triumph in plays by Noël Coward while winning plaudits for the title role in an Ibsen production. Hedda Gabler directed by Ingmar Bergman. When her Desdemona moved to the big screen, she received the first of several Academy Award nominations.

After the first appearances on screen in The Pumpkin Eater (1964) And The Honey Pot (1967)in 1970, she won her first Oscar, that of best actress for Miss Jean Brodie’s Prime Minister, and another in 1979 for Best Supporting Actress in Californian Suite.

Over the next decades, she would collaborate with Merchant Ivory, Alan Bennett, Steven Spielberg and Agnieszka Holland on film, and appear in plays by Oscar Wilde, William Congreve and Edward Albee. Peter Shaffer wrote 1987 Lattice and Lovage especially for her.

She was married twice, for eight years, to the actor Sir Robert Stephens – with whom she had two sons, the actors Chris Larkin and Toby Stephens – and to the playwright Beverley Cross from 1975 until her death in 1998.

In her later years, she never lost touch with her comedic roots, appearing in crowd-pleasing films such as Sisters Act (1992) with Whoopi Goldberg and The best exotic hotel in Souci (2011), alongside his near contemporary Dame Judi Dench.

After an 11-year hiatus from the stage, she returned in 2019 in Sir Christopher Hampton’s one-woman show. A German lifein which she plays a woman looking back on her youth, when she worked as Joseph Goebbels’ secretary.

Off stage, Smith has become an entertaining storyteller on talk shows, whether she’s reciting Sir John Betjeman for Sir Michael Parkinson with frequent stage companion Kenneth Williams, or disparaging her latest display of fame to Graham Norton. When the latter asked her if she had ever watched Downton Abbeyshe pursed her lips and replied drolly: “I have the box.”

She could have a quick wit and wit that Dowager Violet would have appreciated, once saying of Glenn Close: “She’s not an actress, she’s an address.” Her irreverence was proof that no matter what titles she received – she was made a Dame in 1990 and a member of the Order of Companions of Honor, only the third actress to receive such an honor, in 2014 – her character and her Liberty was as impervious to praise and respectability as it was to criticism.

Tributes came from King Charles III and British political leaders from all parties, as well as co-stars and directors.

Sir Kenneth Branagh called her “unquestionably one of the greats”, adding: “It was an honor to work with Maggie Smith. A privilege to watch it. In tragedy, she made you catch your breath while she broke your heart. In comedy, she could laugh at a look or a line at any time. She was lively and prepared for work, which allowed her to have exciting company outside of it.