Dame Maggie Smith, the legendary British actress who stole scenes in everything from the Harry Potter franchise to Downton Abbey, has died at the age of 89.
Her sons, Chris Larkin and Toby Stephens, released a statement through publicist Clair Dobbs that Smith died on Friday 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.
Maggie Smith, April 1964.Terence Donovan/Camera Press/Redux.
Born in Essex in 1934, Smith began her career on stage in London before making her Broadway debut in New Faces of ‘56. Alongside the likes of Dame Judi Dench and Vanessa Redgrave, Smith soon established herself as one of the major talents of the British theater becoming a mainstay of the National Theater and Royal Shakespeare Company. She transitioned from the stage to television and film, winning a leading actress Oscar in 1969 for starring in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. She’d follow that Oscar win with a best supporting actress Oscar less than a decade later for her performance in California Suite in 1978.
Smith made her immense presence felt to a younger generation as transfiguration professor Minerva McGonagall in the eight Harry Potter films from 2001 to 2011. But it was her role as the wry and hilarious Dowager Countess of Gratham on Julian Fellowes’s Downton Abbey that made her a household name. Smith earned three Emmys for her work as Violet Crawley on the British period drama. She was one of the rare actors to earn the Triple Crown of acting—winning a competitive Tony, Emmy, and Oscar—and did so by nabbing two Oscars, four Emmys, and a Tony over the course of her storied career.
