Dame Maggie Smith, of Harry Potter, Downton Abbey, and the Broadway/West End Stage, Dies at 89

Beloved Tony-winning actor Dame Maggie Smith has died at the age of 89.

Born in 1934, Smith grew up in Oxford, England. Her first stage role came at the age of 17 with her debut as Viola in Twelfth Night at the Oxford Playhouse. Appearing in stage productions including Broadway’s New Faces of 1956 and London’s Share My Lettuce in 1957, Smith’s first important film credit was 1958’s Nowhere to Go, for which she received a BAFTA nomination.

Smith was invited by Laurence Olivier to join the National Theatre’s repertory company in 1962, where she played many roles including Desdemona to Olivier’s now-controversial blackface Othello. She and Olivier both earned Oscar nominations for the film adaptation. She won the Oscar in 1979 for her work in the film The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. She also won an Oscar for the 1979 Neil Simon adaptation California Suite, and was nominated a few years earlier for Travels With My Aunt.

At the National, Smith’s productions included The Country-Wife, The Beaux’ Stratagem, and Hedda Gabler. After the National, she had a tenure at the Stratford Festival in Canada. On Broadway she won a Tony for Lettice and Lovage, and was nominated for Private Lives and Night and Day. Into the 21st century, she continued to tackle a variety of major productions, playing in Alan Bennett’s The Lady in the Van and delivering performances in plays by  David Hare and Peter Shaffer. Her final stage appearance was in 2019’s A German Life at the Bridge Theatre, earning an Evening Standard Theatre Award for the role.

More recently on screen, Smith indelibly stared in Gosford Park and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel series, played Wendy in Hook, the Reverend Mother in Sister Act and Sister Act 2, and Professor Minerva McGonagall in the Harry Potter film series. She cemented her status as an icon with her final major role, the Dowager Countess in Downton Abbey, which earned her three Emmy Awards for line deliveries like “What is a weekend?”