Dame Maggie Smith Dies, Aged 89

Beloved actor Maggie Smith has died on the age of 89, it has been confirmed. The information was introduced by her sons Toby Stephens and Chris Larkin in a press release. “It’s with nice disappointment we now have to announce the loss of life of Dame Maggie Smith,” it reads. “She handed away peacefully in hospital early this morning, Friday twenty seventh September. An intensely non-public individual, she was with family and friends on the finish. She leaves two sons and 5 loving grandchildren who’re devastated by the lack of their extraordinary mom and grandmother.”

Smith’s profession spanned a number of many years, throughout each stage and display screen – she started her theatre profession within the early Fifties, whereas her display screen profession started in earnest with 1958’s Nowhere To Go. Her cinematic breakout function got here within the 1965 adaptation of Othello, wherein she performed Desdemona – and was nominated for an Oscar. The movie additionally starred Michael Gambon; it might be removed from the final time the 2 acted collectively. Smith later received her first Oscar for Ronald Neame’s The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie, wherein she took the title function of a spirited instructor at a Thirties ladies’ faculty.

She received one other Oscar for 1976’s California Suite – within the function of an actor who doesn’t win an Oscar after being nominated for one. Elsewhere, Smith starred within the likes of the 1978 Dying On The Nile adaptation; 1981’s Quartet; and Service provider Ivory’s A Room With A View.

To a complete era, Smith will probably be remembered as Professor Minerva McGonagall within the Harry Potter motion pictures – she starred in seven of the eight options (solely missed in Deathly Hallows – Half 1), showing proper from the opening scene in 2001’s The Thinker’s Stone. That function spanned a decade of her life, and made her a beloved determine to younger viewers later in her profession. Not solely did it see her work once more with Michael Gambon, who portrayed Professor Dumbledore from The Prisoner Of Azkaban onwards, however she had additionally beforehand labored with the younger Daniel Radcliffe on the BBC’s 1999 TV adaptation of David Copperfield. McGonagall wasn’t Smith’s first function in a household favorite, both – in Steven Spielberg’s 1991 Peter Pan riff Hook, she had appeared because the aged Wendy Darling.

In her later years, Smith’s profession didn’t decelerate. Through the Potter years, she additionally starred in Robert Altman’s Gosford Park; 2004’s Charles Dance-directed Girls In Lavender; and 2005 British comedy Protecting Mum. Past the Potter saga, she went on to star in The Finest Unique Marigold Lodge and its 2015 sequel; she led Alan Bennett adaptation The Woman In The Van; and most notably, she was a standout in 2010 TV drama Downton Abbey, because the sharp-tongued Dowager Countess. She starred in 52 episodes of the sequence between 2010 and 2015, reprising the function in 2019’s big-screen outing Downton Abbey, and 2022 follow-up Downton Abbey: A New Period. Her remaining display screen function got here in The Miracle Membership, which was launched in cinemas in 2023.

Smith will probably be remembered for her roles which harnessed her fast wit, sharp intelligence, her heat. She will probably be missed, and our ideas are along with her family and friends.