Generations X, Y and Z may know Dame Maggie Smith from her Loewe ad or from her much meme-d “Downton Abbey” quips, but their parents and grandparents very well could share in that fandom too.
Smith was among the elite group of accomplished Britons, as a Companion of Honor to the British Monarch — the highest ranking that is handed out by the royal family. That league includes Sir David Attenborough, Sir Elton John, Sir Ian McKellen, Sir Paul Smith, Sir Paul McCartney, among others. The Essex-born actress, who died Friday at the age of 89, studied acting at the Oxford Playhouse School, and first appeared in professional roles in 1952 — first in Oxford, then in London and onto Broadway in 1956. By the early 1960s, Smith had become a known entity and joined Britain’s National Theatre, and starred opposite Laurence Olivier in “Othello” on stage in 1964 and then a year later in his film version.
Smith’s film career had kicked off in 1958 and continued for decades. She earned an Oscar for Neil Simon’s film adaptation of “California Suite,” and Oscar nods for “A Room With a View” in 1989, and for “Gosford Park” in 2001. But millions around the globe associate Smith with her Professor Minerva McGonagall character in the film adaptations of J.K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter” series. She also served as the voiceover for the animated “Gnomeo & Juliet” and its sequel “Sherlock Gnomes.”
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Her intergenerational loyalists know her as Violet, the aristocratic matriarch of the Crawley family in the British series from Julian Fellowes, “Downton Abbey,” in which she delivered such dry zingers as “What is a weekend?” The role won her an Emmy award.
Smith was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1990 and was named a Companion of Honour in 2014.
In a 1969 review of the feature film “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie,” WWD’s then-critic Rex Reed described his “awe and admiration” for Smith as boundless. Reed said that one thing that he’d like “to make perfectly clear: Maggie Smith is the actress of the year, the freshest, most creative force to happen to movies in a very long time. At a time in the history of movies, when the age of the freak is upon us, she has the power to revolutionize the whole system of stars and star-thinking. Every actress currently working in films should be required to see ‘The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie’ 10 times. (Well, someone like Mia Farrow, maybe 15.) Watching Maggie Smith is a privilege, which comes with rapturously close to bliss.”
That same year Jay Presson Allen, who wrote the stage and screen versions of “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie” rightfully predicted that Smith’s interpretation of a spinster schoolteacher in Edinburgh in the 1930s would make Smith “an international film star.”
The role resulted in the London Film Critics’ Best Actress award, which she calmly told WWD in 1970 she was “delighted” by. “That’s the one I’m sharing with Vanessa (Redgrave, her costar in ‘The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.’)”
Smith’s acting skills were first referenced in WWD in 1956, aptly for the show “New Faces of ’56.” And her absolutely pure interpretation of Desdemona in “Othello” in 1965 led to “playing that [role that] was absolutely heartbreaking and tender, the result of total discipline and technique.” In typical Smith fashion, she sized up that role with complete candor in the 1970 WWD interview. “When Sir Laurence (Olivier) suggested I play Desdemona, my friends winced. They thought I’d fall flat on my face,” she explained.
Counter to her refined carriage, pitch-perfect delivery and gimlet-eyed performances, Smith was decidedly more relaxed during that post-matinee dressing room interview seated somewhat slack sideways in a chair wearing a floral printed tunic, with tussled hair and one arm propped up on the back of her neck for support. Describing doubleheader days at the theater as “frightfully exhausting,” Smith admitted she usually spent the time in between two shows sleeping. But the actress seemed to revel in proving herself, telling WWD at that time, “I’m not a marshmallow. I think it’s good to be able to make people identify with whatever they see.”
Performing in a vast theater with an audience that was so immense took some getting used to. Smith explained to WWD in 1970 “It takes a lot more out of me. You have to use more of yourself and move your entire body.”
But American audiences impressed England’s then-repertoire queen. “It’s startling. They’re such a with-it-group. Certain jokes go over better in London, of course, but they listen so intently here,” Smith said.
Having been plucked from the National Theater of Great Britain, she plunged into her craft wholeheartedly. “That’s why [my husband, the actor] Robert [Stephens] and I don’t entertain. I defy anybody to play both roles simultaneously and do either of them well.”
The couple later divorced in 1975. That same year Smith wed the playwright and librettist Beverly Cross, who predeceased her in 1998.
As much as she loved the classics — “Travels With My Aunt,” “Night and Day,” “Private Lives,” and “Three Sisters” among them, Smith’s film portfolio was broad. In “The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearn” in 1987, Smith’s portrayal of “the penniless, middle-aged Dublin piano teacher, whose only true friend is whisky” was one of the best performances of the year, according to WWD. Smith took chances too. In 1989, she played Rozaline, the Oriental short-hair cat in Armando Acosta’s film version of “Romeo and Juliet” with an all-British cast acting like felines. And apparently, she could on occasion hold her own after-hours. When agent Toni Howard celebrated an exit from William Morris to ICM, Smith helped keep the party going until 4 a.m. with Irving and Mary Lazar, among others.
Although Smith was never known to be a fashion plate, she had a starring role in Loewe’s ad campaign — something that Vogue described as “What Fashion Fans Needed” last fall. Her tussle of hair and gimlet-eyed view of life relayed an undeniable shrewdness. In 1990, Smith helped to forge through another malaise for some seemingly aged-out female professionals seeking acting jobs. Her on-stage appearance in “Lettice and Lovage” happened because she challenged that notion. Playwright Peter Shaffer told WWD in 1990, how Smith had asked him years before over lunch, “You know it’s all very well for the men — they have all those great middle-age parts. But no one today is writing for women except Tennessee [Williams.] What’s there for me to do?”
He compared writing for a virtuoso like Smith as “writing a concert for a great pianist. You want to play to their strengths, but you don’t want to write something just flashy. You want to have substance and glitter.”
Smith acted as a guide at Fustian Hall, a dullsville stately home in England where the only almost event that happened was Elizabeth I nearly fell down the stairs. With such limited material, Smith’s character embellishes Fustian Hall’s history to lift her mood and visitors’ outlook too. Earlier in her career, Smith professed to be more at ease in comedy roles but she liked dramatic parts too. What didn’t she like? “I hate if-y questions,” when asked by WWD about a potential Oscar nominee. But she allowed that if she won, “It would be nice to get a prize,”
Shaffer called Smith “a completely histrionic being,” and “is one of a vanishing breed: the actor, who can enchant an audience entirely.”
Long before she appeared in the “Harry Potter” films, Smith told WWD in 1970, “Big budget films are lunacy. I don’t understand the ludicrous game of monopoly they play for bigger and bigger salaries. It all goes into taxes anyway. But then our fortune is being asked to be in films, when we’re really theater people.”
She continued at that time, “In the early days, the film and stage were worlds apart. I suppose if our livelihood was films, then it would be like a football player with an uncertain time span of usefulness, the money would be all-important.”
Prolific as she was with acting credits, Smith was not all-work, all-the-time. Jesting how she’s “been pregnant, when not busy,” Smith and her first husband had taken their then toddler Christopher for an extended theater run in California in 1970. And she mentioned how it was hard to be away from her younger son Toby, but her mother was caring for him in London.
In a 1979 theater production, Smith was singled out for her wonderful performance that allowed her “to deliver epigrams in her delicious nasal voice.”
Given that range, Smith could be daunting for younger thespians as Julian Sands intimated while filming Ismail Merchant’s and James Ivory’s “A Room With a View.” He told WWD in 1985, “She can walk all over my face and she’d still be magnificent. I don’t suppose she has a clue who I am. I’m sure she thinks I’m Ismail’s boyfriend.”
Smith, who died at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, is survived by her sons Chris Larkin and Toby Stephens.
