On Friday, September 27, the death of Dame Maggie Smith was announced.
I’m sure you know her as the caustic Professor Minerva McGonagall, famous for her stern manner with the young wizards at Hogwarts in the Harry Potter franchise.
Check out Maggie Smith behind the scenes in Harry Potter:
– YouTubewww.youtube.com
Others remember her as the Dowager Countess of Grantham from the hit series Downton Abbey. She portrayed Violet Crawley, the grand matriarch famous for her sharp one-liners throughout the show’s six seasons.
Smith’s career spanned seven decades and ran the gamut from playing Desdemona to Laurence Olivier’s Othello at London’s National Theater to her Oscar-winning turn as Miss Jean Brodie to the Reverend Mother in two of Whoopi Goldberg’s Sister Act films.
She also received a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for California Suite (1978) and a Tony Award for Lettice and Lovage in 1990.
Tributes have been rolling in since news of her death was made public, and she’s been remembered with great fondness by those who worked with her – some of whom also experienced her cutting wit and lack of patience for foolishness or mediocrity.
Smith was 89 years old and died in a London hospital.
This clip from 1969’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, the story of a Mussolini-admiring schoolteacher in 1930s Scotland, offers a fine glimpse of Smith in an Oscar-winning role early in her career:
– YouTubewww.youtube.com
