Maggie Smith was not only the caustic grandmother Violet Crawley in Downton Abbey, or the respectable Professor Minerva McGonagall in Harry Potter. She was also young.
Dame Margaret Smith has just passed away, she would have been 90 years old on December 28. She was a British actress. Known for her performance in comedic roles, she had a long career on stage and screen spanning seven decades and was one of Britain’s most recognizable and prolific actresses. She has received numerous accolades, including two Academy Awards, five BAFTA Awards, four Emmy Awards, three Golden Globe Awards and a Tony Award, as well as nominations for six Laurence Olivier Awards. Maggie Smith was one of the few performers to win the Triple Crown of Acting.
Maggie Smith in her youth © DR
Maggie Smith began her stage career as a student, performing at the Oxford Playhouse in 1952, and made her professional Broadway debut in New Faces of ’56. Over the following decades, Smith established herself alongside Judi Dench as one of Britain’s most important theater performers, working for the National Theater and the Royal Shakespeare Company. On Broadway, she received Tony Award nominations for Noël Coward’s Private Lives (1975) and Tom Stoppard’s Night and Day (1979), and won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for Lettice and Lovage (1990).
In 1970, at the age of 36 © Wikipedia Commons
Margaret Natalie Smith was born on December 28, 1934 in Ilford, Essex. His mother, Margaret Hutton (née Little), was a Scottish secretary from Glasgow and his father, Nathaniel Smith, was a public health pathologist from Newcastle upon Tyne, who worked at the University of Oxford. During his childhood, his parents told Smith the romantic story of their meeting on a train from Glasgow to London via Newcastle. She moved with her family to Oxford when she was four years old. She had older twin brothers, Alistair and Ian. The latter studied architecture. Smith was educated at Oxford High School until the age of 16, when she left to study acting at the Oxford Playhouse.
© British Vogue
In 1952, aged 17, under the auspices of the Oxford University Dramatic Society, Smith began her career as viola in Twelfth Night at the Oxford Playhouse. She continued to act in productions at the Oxford Playhouse, including Cinderella (1952), Rookery Nook (1953), Cakes and Ale (1953) and The Government Inspector (1954). The same year, she appeared in the television program Oxford Accents (1954) produced by Ned Sherrin. In 1956, Smith made her Broadway debut playing several roles in the revue New Faces of ’56, at the Ethel Barrymore Theater from June to December 1956. In 1957, she starred opposite Kenneth Williams in the musical “Share My Lettuce “, written by Bamber Gascoigne.
Maggie Smith has always had this elegance that we knew from her until her last roles © DR
In 1962, Smith won the first of a record six Best Actress Evening Standard Awards for her roles in Peter Shaffer’s plays The Private Ear and The Public Eye, opposite Kenneth Williams. After seeing Smith in The Double-Dealer at The Old Vic, she came to the attention of Laurence Olivier, who invited her to be part of his new National Theater Company shortly after it premiered at The Old Vic in 1962. Alongside Derek Jacobi and Michael Gambon, she quickly became a fixture at the Royal National Theater in the 1960s.
© British Vogue
British theater critic Michael Coveney wrote that during his eight years with the company, Smith developed a fierce rivalry with Olivier, writing: “He knew immediately that he had met his match – that she was extraordinary . He said that anyone who can play comedy so well can also play tragedy and he suggests characters like Desdemona in Shakespeare’s Othello.
© British Vogue
But after bringing him into the company, they became not enemies, but professional rivals. Never before had anyone on stage been faster than him and now, it seemed, that was the case.” Smith worked extensively with Laurence Olivier at the Royal National Theatre. Then she pursued an increasingly more recognized which led to the celebrity status that most of us knew her to be.
At age 39, in 1973 © Wikipedia Commons
