Dame Maggie Smith, the legendary British actor 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 announcing 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 onstage in London before making her Broadway debut in New Faces of ’56. Alongside the likes of Dame Judi Dench and Dame Vanessa Redgrave, Smith soon established herself as one of the major talents of the British theater, becoming a mainstay of the National Theatre and Royal Shakespeare Company. She transitioned from the stage to television and film, winning a lead-actress Oscar in 1970 for starring in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. She’d follow that Academy Award win with a best-supporting-actress Oscar victory in 1979, winning for her performance in California Suite.
Smith made her immense presence felt to a younger generation as transfiguration professor Minerva McGonagall in seven Harry Potter films, released between 2001 and 2011. But it was her role as the wry and hilarious Dowager Countess of Grantham 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—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.
