Oscar-winning acting legend Dame Maggie Smith dies aged 89
27 September 2024, 15:17
Dame Maggie Smith has died aged 89.
The Oscar-winning acting legend has been a star of the screen and the stage since the 1950s.
News of her passing was announced by her sons Chris Larkin and Toby Stephens in a statement today.
“She passed away peacefully in hospital early this morning, Friday 27 September," they wrote.
"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."
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"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."
Widely seen as one of Britain's most prolific actresses, Maggie Smith was honoured with a Damehood in 1990 for for contributions to the arts and a Companion of Honour in 2014 for services to Drama.
Dame Maggie won a Tony award, two Oscars, three Golden Globes and five BAFTAs throughout her career – alongside hundreds of nominations – confirming her place as one of the greatest actresses of her generation.
Born on December 28, 1934, in Ilford, Essex, England, Margaret Natalie Smith, and her twin brothers, Alistair (died 1981) and Ian moved to Oxford with her parents when she was just four-years-old.
Maggie attended Oxford High School until she left to study acting at the Oxford Play House aged 16, and in 1952 when she was just 17-years-old, landed her first significant role playing Viola in Twelfth Night.
After a run of numerous roles on stage, Maggie starred opposite Kenneth Williams in the musical comedy Share My Lettuce, in 1957, and in 1961 won the first of a historic six Best Actress Evening Standard Awards for her performances The Private Ear and The Public Eye, where she once more shared the stage with Kenneth Williams.
It wasn't long before the actress came to the attention of Laurence Olivier and he invited her to become part of the new National Theatre Company at The Old Vic in 1962.
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Smith went on to star in numerous productions throughout the 1960s and according to theatre critic Michael Coveney reportedly developed a fierce rivalry with Olivier.
"He knew immediately he’d met his match – that she was extraordinary," Coveney wrote of Olivier 2021.
"He said that anyone who can play comedy that well can also play tragedy and he offered her the likes of Desdemona in Shakespeare’s Othello.
"But having got her into the company they became not enemies, but professional rivals. Never before had anyone on stage been quicker than him and now, it seemed, there was a contest."
1965 saw Maggie gain her first Oscar nomination for her role of Desdemona in the film adaptation of Othello (1965) and four years later she won her first Oscar for the title role of the 1969 film The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.
Smith's personal life was also on the rise. 1967 saw Maggie marry actor Robert Stephens and the pair had two sons, actors Chris Larkin and Toby Stephens, whom they raised in London.
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Smith continued to shine both on stage and the silver screen and the 1970s saw the star receive to two Tony Award nominations and her third Oscar nomination for her performance in 1972's Travels with My Aunt.
1975 saw Maggie divorce Stephens and marry playwright Alan Beverly Cross on 23 June 1975, at the Guildford Register Office and the couple remained married until his death on 20 March 1998.
By the 1980s Maggie Smith had become a bonafide star, which saw her cast in 1985's A Room with a View – a film which received an incredible 8 Oscar nominations – and saw Smith earn her fifth Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress.
More iconic roles followed including Hook (1991) opposite Julia Roberts and Robin Williams, Sister Act (1992) with Whoopi Goldberg, The Secret Garden (1993), The First Wives Club alongside Goldie Hawn, Diane Keaton and Bette Midler (1996) Tea With Mussolini in (1999) and Gosford Park in 2001.
Smith was introduced to a whole new fanbase when she starred as Professor McGonagall in seven of the eight Harry Potter film series from 2001-2011, in what would become the third-highest-grossing film series in history, with $7.7 billion in worldwide receipts.
Speaking in 2016 about her co-star Alan Rickman, who played Professor Snape in the series, Maggie said: "He [Rickman] was such a terrific actor, and that was such a terrific character that he played, and it was a joy to be with him. We used to laugh together because we ran out of reaction shots.
"They were always - when everything had been done and the children were finished, they would turn the camera around and we'd have to do various reaction shots of amazement or sadness and things," she continued.
"And we used to say we'd got to about number 200-and-something and we'd run out of knowing what to do when the camera came around on us. But he was a joy.
Following on from Harry Potter, Smith became a cultural phenomenon when she took on the role of Violet Grantham in the period drama Downton Abbey, whom she played from 2010 to 2015.
Smith continued to act until her death, taking on a one-woman show, A German Life, in 2019 and in 2021, starred in the Netflix series, A Boy Called Christmas.
In 2023, aged 88, Maggie Smith revealed as the face of German fashion house, Loewe's SS24 pre-collection, a move which cemented her in the annuls of pop culture royalty.
After losing her husband Beverley Cross in 1998, Smith reflected on life without him and how his death changed her.
"I still miss him so much it's ridiculous. People say it gets better but it doesn't. It just gets different, that's all. Even in my dream I kept saying to him, 'You are dead. You can't be here'"
Speaking about her life in her 2023 memoir You Could Make This Place Beautiful, Smith, who was made a Dame of performing arts in 1990 and survived breast cancer in 2007, "Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final."
Maggie leaves behind her two sons Chris and Toby, and grand five children Daisy, Nathaniel, Eli, Tallulah, and Kura.
