Dame Maggie Smith Dies, Aged 89

Beloved actor Maggie Smith has died at the age of 89, it has been confirmed. The news was announced by her sons Toby Stephens and Chris Larkin in a statement. “It is with great sadness we have to announce the death of Dame Maggie Smith,” it reads. “She passed away peacefully in hospital early this morning, Friday 27th September. An intensely private person, she was with friends and family at the end. She leaves two sons and five loving grandchildren who are devastated by the loss of their extraordinary mother and grandmother.”

Smith’s career spanned several decades, across both stage and screen – she began her theatre career in the early 1950s, while her screen career began in earnest with 1958’s Nowhere To Go. Her cinematic breakout role came in the 1965 adaptation of Othello, in which she played Desdemona – and was nominated for an Oscar. The film also starred Michael Gambon; it would be far from the last time the two acted together. Smith later won her first Oscar for Ronald Neame’s The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie, in which she took the title role of a spirited teacher at a 1930s girls’ school.

She won another Oscar for 1976’s California Suite – in the role of an actor who doesn’t win an Oscar after being nominated for one. Elsewhere, Smith starred in the likes of the 1978 Death On The Nile adaptation; 1981’s Quartet; and Merchant Ivory’s A Room With A View.

To an entire generation, Smith will be remembered as Professor Minerva McGonagall in the Harry Potter movies – she starred in seven of the eight features (only missed in Deathly Hallows – Part 1), appearing right from the opening scene in 2001’s The Philosopher’s Stone. That role spanned a decade of her life, and made her a beloved figure to young viewers later in her career. Not only did it see her work again with Michael Gambon, who portrayed Professor Dumbledore from The Prisoner Of Azkaban onwards, but she had also previously worked with the young Daniel Radcliffe on the BBC’s 1999 TV adaptation of David Copperfield. McGonagall wasn’t Smith’s first role in a family favourite, either – in Steven Spielberg’s 1991 Peter Pan riff Hook, she had appeared as the elderly Wendy Darling.

In her later years, Smith’s career did not slow down. During the Potter years, she also starred in Robert Altman’s Gosford Park; 2004’s Charles Dance-directed Ladies In Lavender; and 2005 British comedy Keeping Mum. Beyond the Potter saga, she went on to star in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and its 2015 sequel; she led Alan Bennett adaptation The Lady In The Van; and most notably, she was a standout in 2010 TV drama Downton Abbey, as the sharp-tongued Dowager Countess. She starred in 52 episodes of the series between 2010 and 2015, reprising the role in 2019’s big-screen outing Downton Abbey, and 2022 follow-up Downton Abbey: A New Era. Her final screen role came in The Miracle Club, which was released in cinemas in 2023.

Smith will be remembered for her roles which harnessed her quick wit, sharp intelligence, her warmth. She will be missed, and our thoughts are with her friends and family.