Stage and Screen Actress Dame Maggie Smith Dies at 89

BroadwayWorld is saddened to report that stage and screen actress Dame Maggie Smith has died at age 89. Perhaps best known for her screen roles in the Harry Potter film series and Downton Abbey, Smith also had several stage credits to her name, and won a Tony Award in 1990.

Smith began her career on stage as a student, performing at the Oxford Playhouse in 1952, and made her professional debut on Broadway in New Faces of '56. For her work on the London stage, she has won a record six Best Actress Evening Standard Awards for The Private Ear and The Public Eye (both 1962), Hedda Gabler (1970), Virginia (1981), The Way of the World (1984), Three Tall Women (1994), and A German Life (2019). She received Tony Award nominations for Private Lives (1975) and Night and Day (1979), before winning the 1990 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for Lettice and Lovage.

She appeared in Stratford Shakespeare Festival productions of Antony and Cleopatra (1976) and Macbeth (1978), and West End productions of A Delicate Balance (1997) and The Breath of Life (2002). She received the Society of London Theatre Special Award in 2010. Additionally, Smith appeared as part of four seasons at the Stratford Festival in Ontario between 1976 and 1980, performing in The Way of the World, Antony and Cleopatra, Checkhov’s Three Sisters, The Guardsman, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Macbeth, and Richard III. Watch some of her onstage roles.

On screen, Smith first drew praise for the crime film Nowhere to Go (1958), for which she received her first nomination for a British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) award. She has won two Academy Awards, winning Best Actress for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969) and Best Supporting Actress for California Suite (1978). She is one of only seven actresses to have won in both categories. She has won a record four BAFTA Awards for Best Actress, including for A Private Function (1984) and The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne (1988), a BAFTA Best Supporting Actress for Tea with Mussolini (1999), and three Golden Globe Awards. She received four other Oscar nominations for Othello (1965), Travels with My Aunt (1972), A Room with a View (1986), and Gosford Park (2001).

Smith played Professor Minerva McGonagall in the Harry Potter film series (2001–2011). Her other films include Love and Pain and the Whole Damn Thing (1973), Death on the Nile (1978), Clash of the Titans (1981), Evil Under the Sun (1982), Hook (1991), Sister Act (1992), Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit (1993), The Secret Garden (1993), The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2012), and The Lady in the Van (2015). She won an Emmy Award in 2003 for My House in Umbria, to become one of the few actresses to have achieved the Triple Crown of Acting.

Smith received newfound attention and international fame for her role as Violet Crawley in the British period drama Downton Abbey (2010–2015). The role earned her three Primetime Emmy Awards. Over the course of her career she has been the recipient of numerous honorary awards including the British Film Institute Fellowship in 1993, the BAFTA Fellowship in 1996, and the Society of London Theatre Special Award in 2010. Smith was made a Dame by Queen Elizabeth II in 1990.