Maggie Smith dies, actress battled breast cancer while filming ‘Harry Potter’

ACTRESS – The French public knew her for her interpretation of Professor McGonagall in the Harry Potter saga and Violet Crawyley in the Downton Abbey series. Maggie Smith, a great British actress, notably rewarded with two Oscars, died this Friday, September 27 at the age of 89. An icon who, beyond her prolific career, was also noted for her battle of several years against cancer from which she had recovered and which did not prevent her from making films.

In 2008, when she had already won numerous statuettes on both sides of the Atlantic for her various performances, and when she was essential for all young people in her role as a transfiguration professor at Hogwarts, Maggie Smith learned that she suffers from breast cancer. She was then 74 years old.

« I thought it was no big deal because years ago I had felt a lump and it was benign. I thought that would be the case too », she declared at the time to the English daily The Telegraph. “It takes your breath away a little and I don’t know what the future holds, if anything…”

She held on to turn

Despite chemotherapy, a heavy treatment to treat cancer, the actress maintained her participation in the Harry Potter saga films. Being “ bald as an egg “, she explained, Telegraphhaving worn a wig to play his character in the sixth film Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

A particularly complicated shoot for Maggie Smith who assured that the treatments made her even sicker. But, to the delight of fans of the universe created by JK Rowling, the actress showed resilience and also played her role in the following two Harry Potter films, concluding the saga. All after a time he thought his career would be cut short by illness.

A few years after his diagnosis, the icon of the British big screen finally conquered and continued his magnificent journey with the series by Julian Fellowes Downton Abbeyin which she plays the role of the cantankerous Violet Crawley, a matriarch willing to do anything to preserve her family. Between theater and cinema, she has never left her audience, who will remember her courage from her.

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