Maggie Smith

Maggie Smith first went on stage at 17, in 1952, as Viola in Twelfth Night at the Oxford Playhouse. Four years later she made her Broadway debut in the revue New Faces of ’56.

Laurence Olivier saw her at the Old Vic and invited her into his new National Theatre company. She played Desdemona to his Othello, and the film of the production earned her a first Oscar nomination in 1965. The critic Michael Coveney wrote that Olivier knew at once he had met his match: for the first time, someone on stage was quicker than him.

She won the Best Actress Oscar for the title role in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969), then Best Supporting Actress for California Suite (1978). On stage, Peter Shaffer wrote Lettice and Lovage for her, and it won her a Tony on Broadway in 1990. Younger audiences know her as Professor McGonagall in the Harry Potter films and as Violet Crawley, the Dowager Countess, in Downton Abbey, a part that won her three Emmys.

She died on 27 September 2024. Start with The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, the film that won her first Oscar, before you meet her again at Hogwarts.