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- British actress Maggie Smith, known for her roles in “Harry Potter” and “Downton Abbey”, has passed away at the age of 89. She was celebrated for her contributions for over 60 years in theater and film and won two Oscars.
- Maggie Smith underwent chemotherapy for breast cancer while filming “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” but recovered. Despite her success, she avoided seeing her own performance due to self-criticism.
- Maggie Smith was knighted in 1990 and became a beloved icon in British acting. She is survived by two sons, Chris Larkin and Toby Stephens, who are both actors, and five grandchildren.
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fullscreenMaggie Smith. Photo: Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP
She was on the good side in “Harry Potter”.
And she was in “Downton Abbey”.
But she herself refused to watch the series – because she only saw her own “flaws”.
British actress Maggie Smith is dead, aged 89.
She was nominated for an Oscar six times – and won two.
She was knighted in 1990 and over the years became one of Britain’s most popular actresses.
Maggie Smith – or Dame Margaret Smith as she’s actually called with title and all – was on stage and in front of the camera for over 60 years.
She often – and gladly – played witty, eccentric British ladies in film and television.
Suffered from breast cancer
In recent years, she was praised, among other things, for the role of the Dowager Countess of Grantham, Violet Crawley, in the popular television series “Downton Abbey” on SVT.
But she herself was one of the few Britons who had never seen the series, she admitted in “60 Minutes” on CBS in 2013.
The reason?
– I always see things that I wanted to do differently and think “why in God’s name did I do that”?
We could also see her in all eight Harry Potter films, as the popular Professor Minerva McGonagall, who, together with Albus Dumbledore, left Harry with the Dursleys when his parents were killed – and received him at Hogwarts School of Magic a decade later.
During the filming of “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince”, Maggie Smith underwent chemotherapy after suffering from breast cancer.
She told me that she felt very bad – but recovered.
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full screen Smith was 89 years old. Photo: Joel Ryan/AP
Debut on Broadway
Maggie Smith was born in 1934 in Oxford in the UK and studied theater there, at the Oxford Playhouse School.
It was also there in 1952 that she made her stage debut as Viola, aged just 17. Four years later, she made her debut on Broadway, in “New Faces”.
Since then, she has appeared in countless plays in the UK and the US, but it was through her expressive supporting roles on film that she became known worldwide.
Sin filmdebut gjorde hon 1956 i ”Nowhere to go”.
She has appeared in many successful films, such as “Let the detectives loose, it’s murder”, “Death on the Nile”, “A room with a view”, “Gosford Park”, “Hotel Marigold” and “The Lavender Girls”.
“Devastated”
She has been acclaimed and praised for many of her roles and won Oscars twice, for Best Actress in ‘Miss Brodie’s Best Years’ in 1969 and for Best Supporting Actress in ‘California Suite’ in 1978.
Her two sons, Chris Larkin and Toby Stephens, are both actors.
They were also the ones who sent out a press release about their mother’s death.
Maggie Smith died peacefully in hospital in the early morning hours of September 27, according to her sons.
– She leaves behind two sons and five loving grandchildren who are devastated by the loss of their amazing mother and grandmother, the sons say in a statement.
