DAme Maggie Smith’s trophy cabinet reflected her extraordinary achievements in theater, film and television – and in the greatest arenas of British and US culture, from the BBC to Hollywood, from the West End to Broadway. A testament to her versatility and durability is that she played nine leading roles in the National Theater’s formative years in the 1960s, but also appeared in five series of Downton Abbey, the ITV Sunday evening series, from the early 2000s. which became one of the biggest hits of the new millennium.

Her character in that show was Violet Crawley, Dowager Countess of Grantham, who lived in such a bubble of exclusive comfort that she made drawling, mystifying remarks in characteristic one-liners, such as: “What?” Is a ‘weekend?'” That acerbic superiority was a hallmark of Smith’s entire career, including the role that won her first Oscar in 1970, against a shortlist that also included Liza Minnelli and Jane Fonda for the title role in “The Prime of Miss.” Jean Brodie” based on the novel by Muriel Spark was about a headstrong, arrogant teacher in Edinburgh.

Smith always had the courage and talent to do unexpected things. She received her second Oscar in 1979 for “California Suite,” with a screenplay by Neil Simon and a cast of top Hollywood talent including Alan Alda and Walter Matthau. Bringing an element of postmodernism to a mainstream comedy, Smith played exactly what she was at the start of the decade: an English actress nominated for her first Oscar.

Another surprise on her resume showed the ability to take it straight and gritty. In 2019, after 12 years off stage, Smith delivered a 100-minute monologue at the Bridge Theater in London at the age of 84. “A German Life” was adapted by Christopher Hampton from a documentary interview given by Brunhilde Pomsel, who worked for Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels, at the age of 102 (the series was a rare case of an octogenarian temporarily aging). ). during the Holocaust, but continued to deny complicity or guilt. With typical meticulousness, Smith refused to accept the role until she had proven at home that she could memorize a lengthy solo. The combination of consistently impeccable technique with the courage to test it again at this age was a late triumph in an astonishing career.

Margaret Smith – she preferred her full first name, “Maggie”, imposed on her to distinguish her from other cast members on the Stock Register – was born in Ilford, Essex. Her mother, who worked as a secretary, was Scottish, which was of great benefit in the creation of the Brodie brogue. Her father, Nathaniel, was a pathologist, and his academic work at Oxford led to his daughter attending the city’s girls’ college.

Although he joined the Oxford Playhouse Company at the age of 16 rather than going to college, Smith benefited from the local university’s theatrical privileges and starred in Oxford University Dramatic Society productions, including revues that were attended by national critics at the time.

Such was the influence she had in comedic sketches and songs that at the age of 21 she became part of an ensemble recruited to perform on Broadway in a revue called New Faces of 1956. In the following two years she appeared in London with co-stars such as Kenneth Williams in the English show Share My Lettuce, billed as a “musical distraction”, with a script by Bamber Gascoigne.

At this point, Smith appeared to be a sketch and musical comedian, especially when Strip the Willow, a play about the survivors of a nuclear war in Britain, failed to transfer from a UK tour to London. It was written by Beverley Cross, whom Smith met at the Oxford Playhouse. He wrote the play for her as an attempt at seduction, with the first description of her character being “beautiful.” As elegant and sophisticated as an international top model. A great sense of fun. “A wonderful girl.”

However, no lasting relationship materialized at this point. And Smith’s serious acting career began when she appeared, again opposite Kenneth Williams, in the 1962 double play “The Private Ear” and “The Public Eye” by Peter Shaffer. These earned Smith her first Evening Standard statuette as Best Actress, aged 27, and attracted the attention of Sir Laurence Olivier, who then founded the first attempt at a national theater in Chichester. Crucial to the development of her reputation was that Olivier entrusted her not only with comedies – such as The Recruiting Officer, George Farquhar’s early 18th century farce – but also with tragedies: she played Desdemona in Olivier’s portrayal in the title role of Othello.

Also at the National Theater, Smith struck up a relationship with actor Robert Stephens, who became her first husband and father to her sons, who, like Toby Stephens and Chris Larkin, followed their parents into acting.

Dramatic Exchanges, a collection of correspondence from the National Theater archives, showcases the close creative relationship between Olivier and Smith. As a common nickname, he addressed her as “Mageen.” He had long told her that her perfect role would be Millamant, a strong-willed woman who conspires to achieve a desired marriage, in William Congreve’s Restoration comedy “The Way of the World.” But in 1968, when Smith left the company after her marriage to Stephens and was pregnant with her first child, Olivier began to stage the play with Geraldine McEwan as Millamant.

Olivier’s apology letter to Smith contained extensive admiration. Smith wrote a reply full of painful regret, concluding: “Well, what’s the point of trying to tell you my feelings? They obviously count for very little. It was nice of you to say that you would devote your energy to my return, but I really don’t think it would be wise of me to believe that. Margaret.”

There is a wasp-like, unforgiving tone to this letter that was part of Smith’s personality; Some of her collaborators, particularly younger actors who struggled with their roles, were hurt by humorous but cruel put-downs.

However, the bad luck in casting at the National was more than compensated for. Had Julie Andrews not turned down the Jean Brodie film that same year, Smith would never have played the role that redefined her career. With her American bankability bolstered by a US tour of Noël Coward’s Private Lives, Smith took this opportunity to go into a kind of theatrical exile from Olivier and Britain. From 1976 to 1980 she played four summer seasons at the Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Ontario, designed as a kind of ex-pat RSC National, where she eventually played the role of Millamant and other roles that might have been expected in London . like Lady Macbeth.

Smith fell into a happy rhythm of film appearances and Canadian acting sabbaticals. While she was rehearsing or playing, Beverley Cross wrote to her after she became Smith’s second husband following her divorce from Robert Stephens in 1975.

When Smith returned to the London theater, she took over from Diana Rigg as the troubled modern colonial woman Ruth Carson in Tom Stoppard’s Night and Day. She confirmed her resurgence with two further Evening Standard awards in 1981 and 1984 for London series of shows she premiered in Canada. In Edna O’Brien’s Virginia, she was the writer Virginia Woolf, for whom Smith’s gift for high-spirited wit was her natural fit. Then, 16 years after the disappointment with Olivier, she finally played the coveted role in The Way of the World in her own city.

Contrary to the usual professional chart, after this slight mid-career slump, Smith had a third act even more glorious than her first. Shaffer wrote Lettice and Lovage for her, a comedy that maximizes her sardonic superiority as Lettice Douffet, a tour guide who begins to embellish the story. She took the play to New York, where it won a Tony Award. Smith also became an Alan Bennett specialist. She co-starred with Michael Palin in the 1984 film A Private Function, playing a Yorkshire woman who uses a black market pig to prevent wartime rationing from hindering her opportunities for advancement. In the first series of Bennett’s Talking Heads monologues for television in 1988, she was a vicar’s wife worried about private sins in A Bed Under the Lenses. She was memorable on stage (1999) and screen (2015) as The Lady in the Van, a fictionalized version of Miss Shepherd, a Catholic Protestant tramp who lived in a trailer in Bennett’s driveway for several years.

There have been three West End appearances in plays by the great American playwright Edward Albee: as the eldest (around 90) of three versions of the writer’s domineering mother in Three Tall Women (1994); plays a vicious drunk in a family threatened by an unnamed “plague” in A Delicate Balance (1997); and a mysterious matriarch visiting a deathbed in “The Lady from Dubuque” (2007), a rare flop that kept Smith away from the theater.

Another reason for her withdrawal from the theater, unusual for an actress over seventy years old, was the great demand from film studios. Between 2001 and 2011, she played the role of Professor Minerva McGonagall, Transfiguration teacher at Hogwarts, in seven of the eight Harry Potter films. Her impersonation of the impressive Scottish academic seemed to contain affectionate references to Brodie. The role brought Smith considerable wealth – she joked about the “Harry Potter pension fund” – and a huge new fan base, which, she lamented, made it impossible for her to shop in Waitrose anymore.

Her cinematic renaissance also included Robert Altman’s Gosford Park (2001). In this English country house drama written by Julian Fellowes, Smith’s character was at least a first cousin of her countess from Downton Abbey. Appearing on a television series with an average audience of 10 million made it even more difficult for Dame Maggie (as she had become in 1990) to go shopping. But this late superstar, half a century or more after her first major stage and film successes, confirmed that she was an actress with the rare ability to do anything she wanted, anywhere.