Her mother told her she’d never be an actress “with a face like that”. But Dame Maggie Smith didn’t let that stop her chasing her dream.
She went on to become one of the world’s most acclaimed actors. After her death last month aged 89, the lights were dimmed in London’s West End in memory of a star who was “the crème de la crème”, as Miss Jean Brodie, the character who won her an Oscar, would have said.
On leaving school at 16, Maggie studied drama at the Oxford Playhouse. Her big break came in Broadway comedy New Faces in 1956, leading her to land a critically-acclaimed leading comedy role in the UK.
Laurence Olivier chose her to play Desdemona to his Othello, but they didn’t get on. In one performance, instead of faking a slap, he hit her for real, knocking her out. She later quipped that that was the “only time I saw stars at the National Theatre”.
In the 1963 movie The VIPs, she stole the show from Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. She did such a stellar job, that Richard described her performance as “grand larceny”.
Her role as an eccentric schoolteacher in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie won her a Best Actress Oscar in 1970. In 1979, she took home the Best Supporting Actress award for her part in California Suite.
Maggie’s wide range of roles on stage and screen has also landed her five BAFTAs, four Emmys, three Golden Globes and a Tony.
Critics loved her. One said she played Rosalind’s epilogue in As You Like It “like a chime of golden bells”. Another said she could be “casually malicious, heart-piercingly vulnerable and achingly funny, often in the same role and sometimes in the same sentence”.
Her career spanned seven decades. In later years, she starred as Professor Minerva McGonagall in the Harry Potter movies. Then later as the acid-tongued Dowager Duchess of Grantham in long-running TV show Downton Abbey.
Maggie’s personal life had its fair share of drama too. At 18, she felt attracted to playwright Beverley Cross, but married fellow British actor Robert Stephens in 1967. They had two sons, Chris Larkin, 57, and Toby Stephens, 55, both actors.
However, Robert often struggled with her success and developed a drinking problem. Maggie later said, “It got very, very turbulent. He was a mad person. It got worse, then it went on getting worse and worse.”
They divorced in 1975 and two months later, she married the still-besotted Beverley. “When you meet again someone you should have married in the first place… it’s like a script,” she mused in the 1980s.
Sadly, Beverley died in 1998, aged 66, of heart disease. Years later, Maggie said, “I still miss him so much it’s ridiculous.” She never remarried.
The grandmother of five helped good causes too. In 2011, she became Patron of the campaign to raise $4.6m to rebuild the Court Theatre after it was destroyed in the Christchurch earthquake.
Among the tributes that poured in for Maggie, it was the King who perhaps described her loss best, when he said the curtain had come down on a national treasure.
See Dame Maggie Smith in some of her most famous roles below
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