Maggie Smith

Dame Margaret Natalie Smith was born on 28 December 1934 in Ilford, Essex, England, and died on 27 September 2024. Her father, Nathaniel Smith, was a public-health pathologist from Newcastle upon Tyne who held a position at the University of Oxford, and her mother, Margaret Hutton, was a Scottish secretary originally from Glasgow. The family relocated to Oxford when Smith was four years old, and she grew up alongside older twin brothers. She attended Oxford High School until age sixteen, at which point she left to study acting at the Oxford Playhouse.

Smith launched her stage career in 1952 at the Oxford Playhouse, where, under the auspices of the Oxford University Dramatic Society, she played Viola in Twelfth Night at the age of seventeen. She continued performing there in productions including Cinderella and Rookery Nook in 1952, Cakes and Ale and The Government Inspector in subsequent years, and also appeared in the 1954 television programme Oxford Accents, produced by Ned Sherrin. Her professional Broadway debut came in 1956, when she played multiple roles in the revue New Faces of '56 at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, running from June through December of that year.

Back in Britain, Smith won the first of a record six Evening Standard Awards for Best Actress in 1962 for her work in Peter Shaffer's The Private Ear and The Public Eye. That same year, Laurence Olivier invited her to join his newly formed National Theatre Company at The Old Vic, where she worked alongside Derek Jacobi and Michael Gambon throughout the 1960s. Her roles at the National Theatre included Sylvia in The Recruiting Officer in 1963–64 and Hilde in Ibsen's The Master Builder in 1964–65. Her 1967 portrayal of Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing, directed by Franco Zeffirelli, is considered the earliest British television broadcast of the complete play; the recording was presumed lost until a copy was located at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., in 2010.

Smith's film career began with an uncredited appearance in the 1956 British drama Child in the House. She received her first BAFTA nomination in 1959 for Nowhere to Go and appeared in supporting roles in The V.I.P.s in 1963 alongside Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, and Orson Welles. Her performance as Desdemona opposite Olivier in the 1965 film adaptation of Othello earned her a first Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress. She went on to appear in The Honey Pot in 1967 with Rex Harrison and Hot Millions in 1968 opposite Peter Ustinov, among other films of the period.

Smith won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her title performance in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie in 1969, a role that also brought her a BAFTA Film Award for Best Actress. She earned a second Academy Award, for Best Supporting Actress, for California Suite in 1978. Additional Oscar nominations came for Travels with My Aunt in 1972, A Room with a View in 1985, and Gosford Park in 2001. Her screen credits also include Death on the Nile in 1978, Hook in 1991, Sister Act in 1992, The Secret Garden in 1993, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and Quartet both in 2012, and The Lady in the Van in 2015. She portrayed Professor Minerva McGonagall throughout the Harry Potter film series from 2001 to 2011, and gained renewed international recognition playing Violet Crawley in the British period drama Downton Abbey from 2010 to 2015.

On television, Smith won four Emmy Awards over the course of her career. Three were for her role as Violet Crawley in Downton Abbey, and one was for the HBO film My House in Umbria in 2003.

Smith's Broadway career spanned from 1956 to 1990. Following her debut in New Faces of '56, she returned to Broadway in 1975 to star as Amanda Prynne in Noël Coward's Private Lives at the 46th Street Theatre, directed by John Gielgud, earning her first Tony Award nomination as well as a Drama Desk Award nomination. She received a second Tony nomination for Tom Stoppard's Night and Day in 1979. In 1990, she won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for her performance in Lettice and Lovage, the culmination of a Broadway career that established her among the most significant British theatre performers of her era.

Over the course of her career, Smith accumulated accolades that placed her among a rare group of performers. She is one of the few to have achieved the Triple Crown of Acting, having won competitive awards in film, television, and theatre at the highest levels. Her total honors include two Academy Awards, five BAFTA Awards, four Emmy Awards, three Golden Globe Awards, and a Tony Award, along with six Olivier Award nominations. She received the British Film Institute Fellowship in 1993, the BAFTA Fellowship in 1996, and the Society of London Theatre Special Award in 2010. Queen Elizabeth II made her a dame in 1990.