Maggie Smith
Dame Margaret Natalie Smith was a British actress. Known for her wit in both comedic and dramatic roles, she had an extensive career on stage and screen for over seven decades and was one of Britain's most recognisable and prolific actresses. She received numerous accolades, including two Academy Awards, five BAFTA Awards, four Emmy Awards, three Golden Globe Awards and a Tony Award, as well as nominations for six Olivier Awards. Smith is one of the few performers to earn the Triple Crown of Acting.
Smith began her stage career as a student, performing at the Oxford Playhouse in 1952, and made her professional debut on Broadway in New Faces of '56. Over the following decades Smith established herself as one of the most significant British theatre performers, working for the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company. On Broadway, she received the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for Lettice and Lovage. She was Tony-nominated for Noël Coward's Private Lives and Tom Stoppard's Night and Day.
Smith won two Academy Awards: one Best Actress award for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and one Best Supporting Actress award for California Suite. She was Oscar-nominated for Othello, Travels with My Aunt, A Room with a View and Gosford Park. She portrayed Professor Minerva McGonagall in the Harry Potter film series. She also acted in Death on the Nile, Hook, Sister Act, The Secret Garden, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, Quartet and The Lady in the Van.
Smith received newfound attention and international fame for her role as Violet Crawley in the British period drama Downton Abbey. The role earned her three Primetime Emmy Awards; she had previously won one for the HBO film My House in Umbria. Over the course of her career she was 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.
Early life and education
Margaret Natalie Smith was born on 28 December 1934 in Ilford, Essex. Her mother, Margaret Hutton, was a Scottish secretary from Glasgow, and her father, Nathaniel Smith, was a public-health pathologist from Newcastle upon Tyne, who worked at the University of Oxford. The family moved to Oxford when Smith was four years old. She had older twin brothers, Alistair and Ian. The latter went to architecture school. Smith was educated at Oxford High School until the age of 16, when she left to study acting at the Oxford Playhouse.Career
1952–1968: National Theatre
In 1952, aged 17, under the auspices of the Oxford University Dramatic Society, Smith began her career as Viola in Twelfth Night at the Oxford Playhouse. She continued to act in productions at the Oxford Playhouse, including Cinderella, Rookery Nook, Cakes and Ale and The Government Inspector. That same year, she appeared in the television programme Oxford Accents produced by Ned Sherrin. In 1956 Smith made her Broadway debut playing several roles in the review New Faces of '56, at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre from June to December 1956. In 1957 she starred opposite Kenneth Williams in the musical comedy Share My Lettuce, written by Bamber Gascoigne.In 1962 Smith won the first of a record six Best Actress Evening Standard Awards for her roles in Peter Shaffer's plays The Private Ear and The Public Eye, again opposite Kenneth Williams. She caught the eye of Laurence Olivier, who, after seeing her in The Double Dealer at The Old Vic, invited her to become part of his new National Theatre Company soon after it was formed at The Old Vic in 1962. Alongside Derek Jacobi and Michael Gambon, she soon became a fixture at the National Theatre in the 1960s. The theatre critic Michael Coveney wrote that during her eight years in the company, Smith developed a fierce rivalry with Olivier writing, "He knew immediately he'd met his match – that she was extraordinary. He said that anyone who can play comedy that well can also play tragedy and he offered her the likes of Desdemona in Shakespeare's Othello. But having got her into the company they became not enemies, but professional rivals. Never before had anyone on stage been quicker than him and now, it seemed, there was a contest."
File:Laurence Olivier Carl Van Vechten portrait 3.jpg|thumb|left|upright|Smith worked extensively with Laurence Olivier at the National Theatre.
During a 1964 production of Othello, Olivier struck Smith across the face, knocking her out. She later recalled the incident on a 2015 edition of The Graham Norton Show and in the 2018 documentary Nothing Like a Dame. She appeared opposite Olivier as Sylvia in The Recruiting Officer in 1963–64 and again as Hilde in Ibsen's The Master Builder in 1964–65. Smith's 1967 portrayal of Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing, by the director Franco Zeffirelli, is thought to be the earliest British television broadcast of the entire play. The screen version was assumed lost until a copy was discovered in the Library of Congress in Washington, DC in 2010.
Smith appeared in her first film in 1956, in an uncredited role of a party guest in the British drama Child in the House. In 1959 she received the first of her 18 British Academy Film Award nominations for her role as Bridget Howard in the film Nowhere to Go, her first screen credit. In 1963 she appeared in a supporting role as Miss Dee Mead in the British drama film The V.I.P.s starring Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor and Orson Welles. She earned her first Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress for her performance as Desdemona in the film adaptation of Othello, acting alongside Olivier, Jacobi and Gambon. During this time she also appeared in the British comedy Go to Blazes, The Pumpkin Eater and Young Cassidy. She also appeared in Joseph L. Mankiewicz's crime comedy The Honey Pot starring Rex Harrison and Hot Millions opposite Peter Ustinov. and guest-starred as Music Hall Star in Richard Attenborough's musical comedy Oh! What a Lovely War.
1969–1979: Rise to prominence and stardom
Smith won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in the title role of the 1969 film The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. Vanessa Redgrave had originated the role on stage in London, and Zoe Caldwell won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play, when she played the role in New York City. Smith was singled out for her performance in the film. Dave Kehr of Chicago Reader said that Smith gives "one of those technically stunning, emotionally distant performances that the British are so damn good at." Greg Ferrara wrote that the film "is one of the best British films of the decade. It is as captivating today as it was upon its release and its two central performances by Maggie Smith and Pamela Franklin are both stirring and mesmerizing. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is the crème de la crème." The role also won Smith her first BAFTA Film Award for Best Actress.In 1970 Smith played the title role in Ingmar Bergman's London production of the Henrik Ibsen play Hedda Gabler, winning her second Evening Standard Theatre Award for Best Actress. In 1975 Smith starred as Amanda Prynne in the Noël Coward comedy Private Lives at the 46th Street Theatre on Broadway. The play, directed by John Gielgud, received positive reviews. The New York Times theatre critic praised Smith's physical comedic skills writing, "Miss Smith's body spins, lurches, misses yards at a time before another foot comes down, ends in a paralysis that will require hypnosis to undo. The effect, because Noel Coward's situation is funny and because Miss Smith sends off that one little extra signal that spells extravagance, is hilarious, explosively so." Smith received her first Tony Award nomination and a Drama Desk Award nomination. In the mid-1970s, she made several guest appearances on The Carol Burnett Show.
In 1972 Smith starred as the eccentric Augusta Bertram in George Cukor's film Travels with My Aunt. She received her third Academy Award nomination for Best Actress for her performance. She also appeared in the film Love and Pain and the Whole Damn Thing directed by Alan J. Pakula. Her other films of this time include Murder by Death with Vincent Canby of The New York Times writing that the film had one of Simon's "nicest, breeziest screenplays" with David Niven and Maggie Smith "marvellous as Dick and Dora Charleston, though they haven't enough to do." Smith also starred as Miss Bowers in Death on the Nile alongside Angela Lansbury, Bette Davis, Peter Ustinov and David Niven. In 1978 Smith played opposite Michael Caine in Neil Simon's California Suite, playing an Oscar loser, for which she received the 1978 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She is the only person to have won an Oscar for portraying a fictional Oscar nominee. For this role, she also won her first Golden Globe Award. Afterward, upon hearing that Michael Palin was about to embark on the film The Missionary with Smith, her co-star Michael Caine is supposed to have humorously telephoned Palin, warning him that she would steal the film.
From 1976 to 1980 Smith appeared to acclaim in numerous productions at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Ontario; her roles included: Cleopatra in Anthony and Cleopatra, Titania and Hippolyta in A Midsummer Night's Dream, Queen Elizabeth in Richard III, Rosalind in As You Like It and Lady Macbeth in Macbeth. Smith would return to Broadway in Tom Stoppard's original play Night and Day as Ruth Carson in 1979. The play concerns a confrontation between British diplomat and an African leader over a local uprising that has attracted much media coverage. The diplomat's wife observes everyone else's behaviour throughout. The play received mixed reviews with Walter Kerr of The New York Times praising Smith's performance while critiquing the characters writing, "Which leaves us, theatrically and dramatically, where we began, with Miss Smith. The actress can, and does, do wonders. But she can't single‐handedly turn night into day." Smith received her second Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play nomination.