Dame Maggie Smith, who won two Academy Awards, mentored Harry Potter as Professor McGonagall, and gained new fans as the dowager Countess of Grantham in “Downton Abbey,” has died at the age of 89.
“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,” her sons, Toby Stephens and Chris Larkin, said in a statement provided to the BBC and the Associated Press. “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.”
They continued, “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.”
The Legacy of Maggie Smith
Smith earned high praise as a British female performer among a generation that included Vanessa Redgrave and Judi Dench. During her 60-plus-year career, Smith worked with the greatest directors and actors. She received six Academy Award nominations, winning Best Actress for 1969’s “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie” and Best Supporting Actress for 1978’s “California Suite.”
Even in her later years, Smith remained in demand despite her lament that “when you get into the granny era, you’re lucky to get anything.”
But in 2010, Smith landed only a role she could play: Lady Violet in Julian Fellowes’ “Downton Abbey.” She won two consecutive Emmy Awards for her performance. “She has a style as an actress which is very, very rewarding for a writer,” Fellowes, who had also written “Gosford Park,” told “60 Minutes” in 2013. “She’s very dry. She has this strength, this kind of emotional strength that is also underlying every laugh she gets.”
Smith’s honors and trophy case are second to none. In addition to her two Oscars, she won four Emmys, three Golden Globes, five BAFTAs, a Tony, and an honorary Olivier Award. She became one of 21 actors to ever win an EGOT, and the late Queen Elizabeth named her a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1990.
