Dame Maggie Smith, star of the Harry Potter films and Downton Abbey, has died at the age of 89.
She made her acting debut in 1952 and was still working seven decades later having moved from aspiring star to national treasure.
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She started out in the theatre as a prompt girl and understudy at the Oxford Repertory. Her first film role was an uncredited part in 1956. Two years later she was nominated for a Bafta as Best Newcomer in the 1958 melodrama, Nowhere to Go, in which she played a girl who shelters an escaped convict.
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In 1963, Laurence Olivier offered her the part of Desdemona opposite his Othello, at the National Theatre. Two years later, a film version with the original cast saw Smith being nominated for an Academy Award.
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In 1969 she played one of her most famous roles, the non-conformist teacher in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.
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The role won her a Best Actress Oscar, international fame and also marriage to her co-star Robert Stephens. She celebrated her win with a small party at the Stalls Bar in The Old Vic in London.
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The couple had two sons, Toby Stephens and Chris Larkin.
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Smith continued with the National Theatre including a performance alongside her husband in the Restoration comedy The Beaux’ Stratagem in Los Angeles.
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She received another Oscar nomination for Best Actress after playing Aunt Augusta in the George Cukor film, Travel’s With My Aunt, in 1972.
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While touring America in Private Lives (a play in which they also appeared in London) Stephens, also the play’s co-star, walked out on her and the production, leaving her to finish the tour alone.
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Smith and Stephens lead the singing of ‘Auld Lang Syne’ at a New Year’s Eve party in 1973. However the marriage was to fail, and they divorced. In 1976, she married the playwright, Beverley Cross.
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The family moved to Canada and Smith spent four years in a repertory company. However, she continued to work in the cinema, starring opposite David Niven in Murder By Death in 1976.
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In 1978 she played opposite Peter Ustinov in Death on the Nile.
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The Eighties saw a number of memorable cinema performances, and more awards including Baftas for A Private Function, starring with Michael Palin and A Room With A View, which also garnered her a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination.
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Smith, her two sons and husband Beverley Cross had a country home in Sussex.
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Smith combined her cinema work with a return to the stage, which included performances in Simon Callow’s production of ‘The Infernal Machine’, at the Lyric, Hammersmith, and Lettice and Lovage at the Globe Theatre, London
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In 1990 she was created DBE and, a year later, appeared as the ageing Wendy in Hook, Stephen Spielberg’s sequel to Peter Pan.
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Smith’s fan base grew in the noughties after she appeared as Professor McGonagall in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, a role she would reprise in subsequent Potter movies.
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In 2004 she appeared with her long time friend and fellow Dame Judy Dench, in the gentle drama Ladies in Lavender.
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Two years later she was the cash strapped Countess of Trentham in Gosford Park, Robert Altman’s take on the English country house murder.
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It was a role that she reprised in all but name when she was cast in ITV drama, Downton Abbey. The name of her character may have changed to the Dowager Countess of Grantham but the performance was essentially the same.
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She remained with the Downton Abbey cast until 2015 when the series finally came to an end, reprising the role for two films in 2019 and 2022.
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In 2007 Smith was diagnosed with breast cancer. She was given the all-clear after two years of treatment and went on to receive a Bafta nomination for her role in the 2012 film, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
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2015 saw her give a moving performance in the film, The Lady in the Van, based on the true tale of Mary Shepherd, an elderly woman who lived in a dilapidated van on the writer Alan Bennett’s driveway in London for 15 years.
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Smith’s final screen role was in 2023 in The Miracle Club, alongside Laura Linney and Kathy Bates. Set in 1967, it follows a group of women from Dublin who go on a pilgrimage to the French town of Lourdes.
AP
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