British actress Maggie Smith, legend of theater and cinema, has died at the age of 89, her two sons announced on Friday.
Maggie Smith, one of the most respected and iconic figures in British film and television, has died aged 89.
“She passed away peacefully in hospital early this morning”said his sons Chris Larkin and Toby Stephens. “She was a very private person, but she was with her friends and family at the end of her life. She leaves two loving sons and five grandchildren who are devastated by the loss of their extraordinary mother and grandmother.”they added.
If some discovered her in “Sister Act” in 1992, it was above all her emblematic role of Minerva McGonagall in the “Harry Potter” saga which really left its mark. Since 2001, the British actress has become an essential face of cinema thanks to this character who is as strict as she is endearing. She won the affection of international audiences with her role as the Dowager Countess, Lady Violet, in the television series Downton Abbey.
“I led a perfectly normal life before Downton Abbey”a series sold in more than 150 countries, the actress told the British Film Institute in April 2017. “I used to go to the theater, to art galleries, things like that, by myself. Now I can’t.”she lamented.
Before slipping into the witch’s dress, Maggie Smith already had an impressive career. Oscar for best actress in 1969 for “The Beautiful Years of Miss Brodie”, and rewarded again in 1978 for “California Hotel”, she left her mark on the boards and film sets with her unrivaled talent. She notably won two Oscars, six Baftas (including an honorary one), three Golden Globes and four Emmy Awards during her career, for a total of 108 nominations across all awards.
Last year, she was chosen as the muse of the Spanish fashion house Loewe.
Born on December 28, 1934 in Ilford, Essex (south-east of England), Margaret Smith began on the stages of the Oxford Playhouse in the early 1950s. She then joined the troupe of the London theater of the Old Vic then that of the Royal National Theater where she had a string of successes, alongside her husband, the actor Robert Stephens.
Her film career took off in the 1960s and in 1969 she won the Oscar for best actress for “The Beautiful Years of Miss Brodie”.
Her marriage to Robert Stephens, an alcoholic, unfaithful and depressive, with whom she had two sons, collapsed in 1973. She divorced in 1975 and remarried shortly after to the playwright Beverley Cross, with whom she went to live and work at the Canada.
One of the best-known and most celebrated British artists, Maggie Smith was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1990 and a Companion of Honor in 2014. A complete artist, she was known for her humor and his concern for perfection, veering towards ferocity.
“It’s true that I don’t tolerate fools, and therefore they don’t tolerate me, and so I bristle. Perhaps that’s why I’m quite good at playing cantankerous old ladies.”she declared to the British daily The Guardian in 2014. She had thus excelled by playing the very snobbish and chilling Lady Constance in the film “Gosford Park” by Robert Altman (2001), whose screenwriter was already Julian Fellowes, who wrote Downton Abbey.
She “can capture more in an instant than many actors can convey in an entire film. She can be vulnerable, fierce, dark and hilarious at the same time and brings to the set every day the energy and curiosity of a young actor who just started,” Nicholas Hytner, who directed her in “The Lady in the Van” (2015), said of her.
Maggie Smith survived breast cancer diagnosed in 2007 and participated in the filming of the film “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” (2009) while undergoing chemotherapy treatment. “I was as bald as an egg.”told the Times in 2009 the actress who had to wear a wig.
She also suffered from Graves’ disease, an autoimmune disease of the thyroid which causes the eye to move out of its socket. Maggie Smith leaves two sons, actors Chris Larkin and Toby Stephens, whom she had with Robert Stephens.
Maggie Smith
