Legendary Dame Maggie Smith, whose career spanned seven decades on stage and screen, has died aged 89.
A statement from her sons Toby Stephens and Chris Larkin said: “It is with great sadness we have to announce the death of Dame Maggie Smith.
“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.”
Her career began in theatre, as an assistant stage manager in 1952 before performances in Twelfth Night, Cinderella, Rookery Nook, Housemaster, W Somerset Maugham’s Cakes and Ale and The Letter and Nikolai Gogol’s The Government Inspector.
In 1956, she went to New York City to make her Broadway debut in the revue New Faces of ’56. Her real breakthrough was an invited by Laurence Olivier to join his company at the National Theatre where she would for eight years.
Film roles would follow in Nowhere to Go, Go to Blazes, The Pumpkin-Eater, The VIPs, Young Cassidy, The Honey Pot, Hot Millions, O What a Lovely War! and 1969’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, delivering her an Academy Award for Best Actress.
Further films would include Hedda Gabbler, Travels with My Aunt, Love and Pain and the Whole Damn Thing, Murder By Death, California Suite (collecting her second Oscar), Death on the Nile, Evil Under the Sun, Clash of the Titans, n A Private Function, A Room with a View, The Lady in the Van, Tea with Mussolini, Ladies in Lavender, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, Sister Act, The First Wives Club, Gosford Park, and as Minerva McGonagal in the Harry Potter franchise.
On Television she was memorable as the Dowager Countess of Grantham in Downton Abbey given such famed quips as “what’s a weekend?” and collecting three Emmy Awards.
She also featured in the American broadcast of Tennessee Williams’s Suddenly, Last Summer, a BBC dramatisation of Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield and the TV films My House in Umbria and Capturing Mary.
Smith received eight BAFTA awards, was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in 1990 and was named a Companion of Honour (CH) in 2014.
She once said, “I am deeply grateful for the work in Potter and indeed Downton, but it wasn’t what you’d call satisfying. I didn’t really feel I was acting in those things. I wanted to get back to the stage so much because theatre is basically my favourite medium, and I think I felt as though I’d left it all unfinished.”
Source: BBC, Independent
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