Dame Maggie Smith Dead at 89

Dame Maggie Smith, an iconic actress for multiple generations, is dead at 89. Her sons, Toby Stephens and Chris Larkin, said she died “peacefully in hospital early this morning, Friday, 27th September,” per a statement to the BBC. “An intensely private person, she was with friends and family at the end,” they added. “She leaves two sons and five loving grandchildren who are devastated by the loss of their extraordinary mother and grandmother.” A two-time Oscar winner, Smith was one of the most celebrated actresses of the 20th century and became known to younger generations through her portrayals of Professor McGonagall in the Harry Potter series and Lady Violet Crawley in Downton Abbey.

Smith was born in Essex in 1934 to a pathologist father, Nathaniel, and a pathologist mother, Margaret, known as Nat and Meg. The family moved to Oxford when Smith was 4. Smith enrolled in a local drama school at 16 after a teacher recommended it, despite never having acted before. What did the teacher see? “I think I was just very odd,” Smith told The Guardian in 2004. Smith made her Broadway debut in 1956, as part of the revue New Faces of ’56, and joined the National Theatre Company at the Old Vic in 1962, at the behest of Laurence Olivier. She won her first Academy Award for her leading role in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie in 1970 — she starred in the film alongside her then-husband Robert Stephens, father to both her children. The two separated in ’73 and she married playwright Beverley Cross in ’75. She won her second Academy Award for California Suite in 1979.

Smith was made a dame in 1990 by Queen Elizabeth II. She was nominated for four Academy Awards, six Olivier Awards, and three Tony Awards, winning one for Lettice and Lovage in 1990. In 2001, she joined the Harry Potter franchise as the stern but intelligent Professor Minerva McGonagall, a role that would endear her to audiences in an entirely new way. “A lot of very small people used to say hello to me, and that was nice,” Smith told The Graham Norton Show when asked how the films changed her life. Another iconic role arrived in Lady Violet on Downton Abbey, which earned her three Emmy Awards, making her a Triple Crown of Acting. Her character died at the end of the second Downton Abbey film adaptation, Downton Abbey: A New Era, in 2022. As she dies, she admonishes her lady’s maid: “Stop crying, Denker. I can’t hear myself die.”