Maggie Smith, actress, 1934-2024

It is a testament to Dame Maggie Smith’s long, varied and celebrated career that it would be offensive to reference any particular role. In fact, it is reductive to even consider one particular medium.

For moviegoers, here is her Oscar-winning performance The heyday of Miss Jean Brodie (1969). For those who grew up in the 2000s Harry PotterSmith, who has died aged 89, will always be Professor Minerva McGonagall.

She scowled on the small screen Downton Abbey as the indomitable grandmother of a thousand memes, Violet Crawley, Dowager Countess of Grantham.

But many will argue that it was in the theater that this extremely versatile performer demonstrated her absolute mastery, delighting critics and audiences, playwrights who created their works specifically for her, and male colleagues crouching behind the scenes.

This versatility led to her 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.

She was born in Ilford, Essex, in 1934 and grew up in Oxford, where she made her stage debut as a viola at the age of 17 Twelfth Night and her professional debut on Broadway four years later, in 1956.

Smith herself summed it up: “One went to school, one wanted to act, one started acting, and one is still acting.” She showed a particular talent for comedy, appearing in revues and farces before attracting attention attracted the attention of Sir Laurence Olivier, who recruited her to the National Theater where she quickly established herself as his colleague, if not his competitor.

With her repertoire she celebrated triumphs in plays by Noël Coward and at the same time earned praise for the title role in a production by Ibsen Hedda Gabler Director: Ingmar Bergman. When her Desdemona hit the screen, she received the first of several Oscar nominations.

After early film appearances in The Pumpkin Eater (1964) And The Honeypot (1967)In 1970 she won her first Oscar for Best Actress The heyday of Miss Jean Brodie, and another for best supporting actress in 1979 California Suite.

Over the next few decades she worked in film with Merchant Ivory, Alan Bennett, Steven Spielberg and Agnieszka Holland and appeared in plays by Oscar Wilde, William Congreve and Edward Albee. Peter Shaffer wrote in 1987s Lettuce 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 from 1975 until his death in 1998 to the playwright Beverley Cross.

In her later years, she never lost touch with her comic roots, appearing in crowd favorites such as Sister law (1992) with Whoopi Goldberg and The best exotic Marigold hotel (2011), alongside her close contemporary Dame Judi Dench.

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

Off stage, Smith made for an entertaining narrator on talk shows, whether recitating Sir John Betjeman to Sir Michael Parkinson with her frequent stage companion Kenneth Williams or disparaging her latest celebrity to Graham Norton. When he asked if she had ever watched Downton AbbeyShe pursed her lips and replied humorously, “I have the box.”

She might have a perspicacity and wit that would have pleased Widow Violet when she once said of Glenn Close: “That’s not an actress, that’s an address.” Her irreverence was evidence that her character and freedom remained intact , no matter how many titles she received – she was made a Dame in 1990 and made a Member of the Order of the Companions of Honor in 2014, only the third actress to receive such an award. She was as immune to praise and prestige as she was to criticism.

Honors came from King Charles III. and British politicians of all parties as well as co-stars and directors.

Sir Kenneth Branagh called her “undoubtedly one of the greats” and continued: “It was an honor to work with Maggie Smith. A privilege to watch them. In tragedy, she let you catch your breath while she broke your heart. In comedy, she could always get a laugh from a look or a line. She was sharp and prepared at work and made for exhilarating company away from it.”