Maggie Smith, Oscar-winning star of stage and screen, dies aged 89

Maggie Smith, the prolific, multi-award-winning actor whose work ranged from The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie to Harry Potter to Downton Abbey, has died aged 89.

The news was confirmed by her sons Chris Larkin and Toby Stephens in a statement. They said: “She passed away peacefully in hospital early this morning, Friday 27th September.

“An intensely private person, she was with friends and family at the end. She leaves two sons and five loving grandchildren who are devastated by the loss of their extraordinary mother and grandmother.

“We would like to take this opportunity to thank the wonderful staff at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital for their care and unstinting kindness during her final days.

“We thank you for all your kind messages and support and ask that you respect our privacy at this time.”

Smith’s gift for acid-tongued comedy was arguably the source of her greatest achievements: the waspish teacher Jean Brodie, for which she won an Oscar, prim period yarns such as A Room With a View and Gosford Park, and a series of collaborations on stage and screen with Alan Bennett including The Lady in the Van. “My career is chequered,” she told the Guardian in 2004. “I think I got pigeonholed in humour … If you do comedy, you kind of don’t count. Comedy is never considered the real thing.” However, Smith also excelled in non-comedic dramatic roles, performing opposite Laurence Olivier for the National Theatre, winning a best actress Bafta for The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne, and playing the title role in Ingmar Bergman’s 1970 production of Hedda Gabler.

Born in 1934, Smith grew up in Oxford and began acting at the city’s Playhouse theatre as a teenager. While appearing in a string of stage shows, including Bamber Gascoigne’s 1957 musical comedy Share My Lettuce opposite Kenneth Williams, Smith also made inroads on film, with her first substantial impact in the 1958 Seth Holt thriller Nowhere to Go, for which she was nominated for a best supporting actress Bafta. After starring in Peter Shaffer’s stage double bill The Private Ear and The Public Eye, Smith was invited by Olivier to join the nascent National Theatre company in 1962, for whom she appeared in a string of productions, including as Desdemona to Olivier’s Othello in his notorious blackface production in 1964. (Smith repeated the role in Olivier’s film version the following year, for which they were both Oscar-nominated.)

In 1969 she was cast in the lead role of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, the adaptation of the Muriel Spark novel about the Edinburgh schoolteacher with an admiration for Mussolini; Smith went on to win the best actress Oscar in 1970. Later the same year she starred in Ingmar Bergman’s production of Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler for the National Theatre in London’s West End; the Evening Standard’s Milton Shulman described her as “haunt[ing] the stage like some giant portrait by Modigliani, her alabaster skin stretched tight with hidden anguish.” Another Oscar nomination for best actress came her way in 1973 for the Graham Greene adaptation Travels with My Aunt, and an Oscar win (for best supporting actress) in 1979 for California Suite, the Neil Simon-scripted anthology piece in which she played an Oscar-nominated film star.

Smith continued her successful parallel film and stage careers in the 1980s. She starred opposite Michael Palin in A Private Function, the wartime-set comedy about food rationing, co-scripted by Alan Bennett, and had a colourful supporting role as gossipy cousin Charlotte Bartlett in Merchant Ivory’s A Room With a View, for which she was nominated for yet another Oscar. She followed it up with The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne, a character study in which Smith played the unmarried, frustrated woman of the title. On stage she played Virginia Woolf in Edna O’Brien’s 1980 play at the Stratford Festival theatre in Canada, and in 1987 starred as tour guide Lettice Douffet in Peter Shaffer’s Lettice and Lovage. She also reunited with Bennett for his Talking Heads series on both radio and TV, playing a vicar’s wife having an affair.

Film roles continued to roll in: she starred alongside Joan Plowright and Cher in Franco Zeffirelli’s loosely autobiographical Tea With Mussolini, a dowager countess in Robert Altman’s country-house murder mystery Gosford Park, and opposite Judi Dench in Ladies in Lavender, written and directed by Charles Dance. She also accepted the prominent role of Minerva McGonagall in the Harry Potter film series, appearing between 2001 and 2011 in every instalment apart from Deathly Hallows Part 1. Meanwhile she achieved arguably her most impactful TV role as the countess of Grantham in Downton Abbey, created by Gosford Park writer Julian Fellowes – reprising the role in two standalone cinema films, released in 2019 and 2022. Having played the role on stage in 1999, Smith enjoyed a late career triumph in The Lady in the Van, Alan Bennett’s memoir about the woman who lived on his driveway.

Smith was married twice: to fellow actor Robert Stephens between 1967 and 1975, and Beverley Cross between 1975 and his death in 1998.

RIP. Such a great actress and talented person.

It was fun seeing Maggie Smith in Murder By Death a few years ago, a movie I saw on TV as a kid, playing "Nora" to David Niven's "Nick" (The Thin Man).

Admired by generations of fans she will be missed. RIP Dame Maggie Smith.

She killed it in California Suite, the role she won an Oscar for. Glad that she won so many years ago for a comedic performance rather than winning for playing a dowinger late in life.

Watched "Hot Millions" on TCM not long ago. Fun late 60's flick starring Peter Ustinov and Maggie Smith that has early hacking on a mainframe. Also with Bob Newhart who had died recently. At the time I mentioned how she was still with us.

She's recognized mostly for Harry Potter. I'll remember her best in Sister Act. RIP

She was always fun to watch. This isn’t a surprise given her age but it’s sad nonetheless.

I recognize her from other movies but I just recently re-watched the Harry Potter movies with my son and she elevated the role so much with just her presence.

My younger self enjoyed her performance in Clash Of The Titans. My older self thought she was wonderful in The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie. She also had some memorable appearances on The Carol Burnett Show back in the 70s, well worth checking out. She'll be missed by many.

One of my favorite movies that so few know about!

Oh wow. Loved her in so many things. RIP DMS

Great actress loved her in Harry Potter and Downton Abbey.

Dame Maggie Smith

For me, quintessential Maggie Smith was her performance in Gosford Park. That type of character was right in her strike zone, especially later in life.

I had forgotten she was in Clash of the Titans. That was almost certainly the first thing I saw her in as a child.

Agreed. That's the film that comes to mind the most when I think of Maggie Smith.

Wow!

Another screen legend, gone... RIP

RIP a true legend

Not a big Harry Potter or Downton Abbey fan but remember her in the Exotic Marigold movies and I saw her recently in the Miracle Club on Netflix with Laura Linney.

Sad that might have been her last role.

Sir Ian McKellen tell a funny story about her on Graham Norton.