Dame Maggie Smith Dies at 89

[JamesG]

Downton Abbey and Harry Potter Actress Maggie Smith Dead at 89
by Jill Lawless
Sept. 27, 2024


Maggie Smith, the masterful, scene-stealing actor who won an Oscar for the 1969 film “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie” and gained new fans in the 21st century as the dowager Countess of Grantham in “Downton Abbey” and Professor Minerva McGonagall in the Harry Potter films, died Friday. She was 89.

Smith’s sons, Chris Larkin and Toby Stephens, said in a statement that Smith died early Friday in a London hospital. “She leaves two sons and five loving grandchildren who are devastated by the loss of their extraordinary mother and grandmother,” they said in a statement issued through publicist Clair Dobbs.




She made her film debut in the 1950s, won Oscars for work in the 60s and 70s and had memorable roles in each subsequent decade, including an older Wendy in Peter Pan story “Hook” (1991) and a mother superior of a convent in Whoopi Goldberg’s comedy “Sister Act” (1992).

She remained in demand even in her later years, despite her lament that “when you get into the granny era, you’re lucky to get anything.”




From 2010, she was the acid-tongued Violet Crawley, Dowager Countess of Grantham, in hit TV period drama “Downton Abbey,” a role that won her legions of fans, three Emmy Awards, a Golden Globe and a host of other awards nominations.

But she chafed at television fame. When the show’s run ended in 2016, Smith said she was relieved. “It’s freedom,” she told The Associated Press.

“Not until ‘Downton Abbey’ was I well-known or stopped in the street and asked for one of those terrible photographs,” she said.

https://apnews.com/article/actress-m...7d9bca24ed1f9a

[Dude111]

Very sad..........

[TMC]

Maggie Smith was Downton's superpower

As the tart-tongued Dowager Countess of Grantham, she was “Downton's” superpower — able to freeze a room with a glance, break your heart with ...