Working with Maggie Smith, as I did in The Missionary and A Private Function, meant being in the presence of pure acting gold. Maggie was so skilled and intuitive. She was able to portray a maximum of emotions with minimal effort. Nothing was ever wasted with Maggie.

The smallest glance could contain so much information, the smallest gesture could be so significant that you had to be on your guard to stay with her. The two films we did together were comedies, and Maggie’s impeccable comedic timing was an absolute joy to watch and a privilege to be a part of.

Her wit was sharp and always icily targeted. I remember having dinner with her and Alan Bennett in a rather fancy restaurant in Yorkshire during the filming of A Private Function, when I spotted a piece of glass in my mixed salad. No big fuss was made. To the manager, Maggie simply described it as “a very mixed salad.”

Maggie made it look so easy and yet I always felt like there was something else there. Something was holding back. An impatience with life. That she was blessed with such an instinctive, effortless understanding of what acting was all about made her reject anything she saw as boring and uninspired. She didn’t suffer fools.

She always claimed that rehearsal was the part of the process she enjoyed best. Thinking about how to make the whole thing as good as possible. Once you got that right, the rest was easy and, as she suggested, rather less fun.

I rate our work together as one of the happiest times of my life. I will mourn her death very sadly, but remember her very fondly.