Maggie Smith of Downton Abbey, Harry Potter fame has died aged 89
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Maggie Smith, who won an Oscar for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie in 1969 and won new fans in the 21st century as the dowager Countess of Grantham in Downton Abbey, has died, her publicist said Friday. She was 89.
Her sons, Chris Larkin and Toby Stephens, said in a statement that Smith died early Friday in a London hospital. “She leaves two sons and five loving grandchildren who are devastated by the loss of their extraordinary mother and grandmother,” they said in a statement issued through publicist Clair Dobbs.
An enviable legacy
To millennials worldwide, Maggie was known for playing the dowager Countess of Grantham in Downton Abbey, a role that seemed tailor-made for an actress known for purse-lipped asides and malicious cracks, and Professor McGonagall in the Harry Potter movies. She's one of the few actors to win the treble of an Oscar (two), Emmy (four), and Tony, Maggie's long career started on the stage in the 1950s.
Her first Academy Award nomination was for her turn playing 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 2001 black comedy movie Gosford Park.
In 1990 Maggie was knighted by Queen Elizabeth and became a Dame. She was frequently rated the preeminent British woman actor of a generation that included Vanessa Redgrave and Judi Dench.
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