Actress Dame Maggie Smith died on Friday, September 27, 2024. According to her sons, Toby Stephens and Chris Larkin, she passed away peacefully in a hospital with family and friends by her side. She was 89 years old.
Smith was an Academy Award winner who spent six decades on the stage and screen. During her career, she was a professor at Hogwarts, a dowager countess, the tragic Desdemona, and Peter Pan’s friend, Wendy Darling.
She was born in Ilford, Essex, England on December 28, 1934. After graduating from high school, she attended the Oxford Playhouse School in the early 1950s. Her professional acting debut came in ’52 in a production of Twelfth Night at Oxford University and a few years later, she arrived on Broadway in the comedy revue New Faces of 1956. Her first onscreen work was in BBC Sunday-Night Theatre, followed by a bigger part in Nowhere to Go.
In the ‘60s, Smith performed in the National Theatre of Great Britain and played Desdemona opposite Laurence Olivier in Othello. She reprised the part for the film adaptation, earning her first Oscar nomination.
Smith won her first Oscar in ’69 for playing an unorthodox teacher in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. She earned her third Oscar nod for Travels with My Aunt, she played Miss Bowers in the film adaptation of Death on the Nile, and won her second Oscar in ’78 for California Suite. In the ‘80s, Smith was in Clash of the Titans, A Private Function, A Room with a View (getting her fifth Oscar nomination), and The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne.
She played Granny Wendy in the beloved Peter Pan adaptation, Hook, and portrayed the strict Mother Superior in Sister Act and its sequel. She was in The First Wives Club, Washington Square, Tea with Mussolini, she got her sixth Oscar nomination for Gosford Park, and won an Emmy for the TV movie My House in Umbria.
In 2001, she joined what would become a global phenomenon, playing Professor Minerva McGonagall in the Harry Potter franchise. By this point Smith had established herself for playing no nonsense women who were still warm underneath their scowls, which she played to perfection in the eight-film series.
Over the last decade, Smith has flexed her dramatic chops as the unstoppable Violet Crawley, Dowager Countess of Grantham in Downton Abbey. For her work on the period drama, Smith won Emmys in 2011, 2012, and 2016, and was nominated in 2013 and 2014.
Smith was also in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, A Boy Called Christmas, was recently in Downton Abbey: A New Era, and her final role was in 2023’s The Miracle Club.
