LONDON: British actress Maggie Smith, an award-winning Shakespearian actress and double Oscar winner who later appeared in the Harry Potter films as Professor Minerva McGonagall, has died aged 89, the BBC reported on Friday (Sept 27).
One of the few actors to win an Oscar (two), Emmy (four), and Tony, Smith’s long career started on the stage in the 1950s.
For many younger fans in the 21st century, she was best known as Professor McGonagall in all seven “Harry Potter” movies and the Dowager Countess in the hit TV series and movie spin-offs of “Downton Abbey,” a role that seemed tailor-made for an actress known for purse-lipped asides and malicious cracks.
Her first Academy Award nomination was for her role as Desdemona opposite Laurence Olivier’s “Othello” in 1965 before winning the Oscar for her role as an Edinburgh schoolmistress in 1969’s “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.”
She won her second Oscar for her supporting role in the 1978 comedy “California Suite,” a performance that prompted co-star Michael Caine to say: “Maggie didn’t just steal the film, she committed grand larceny.”
Other critically acclaimed roles included Lady Bracknell in Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest” on the West End stage, a 92-year-old bitterly fighting senility in Edward Albee’s play “Three Tall Women,” and her part in the 2001 black comedy movie “Gosford Park.”
In 1990 Smith was knighted by Queen Elizabeth and became a Dame.
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