British actress Maggie Smith dies

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung British actress Maggie Smith dies 4 hours • 4 minutes reading time Maggie Smith was 89 years old. British actress Maggie Smith has died at the age of 89. Her family announced this on Friday, according to the British news agency PA. Smith, who became world famous through her roles in the "Harry Potter" films and the "Downton Abbey" series, died in a hospital in the presence of friends and family, said her sons Chris Larkin and Toby Stephens. A fearsome, sharp-tongued and at the same time witty aristocrat: Maggie Smith played Lady Violet Crawley in "Downton Abbey". Margaret Nathalie Smith was born on December 28, 1934 in Ilford in the English county of Essex. Her mother Margaret Hutton Little was Scottish, her father Nathaniel Smith came from Newcastle, England. She grew up with her twin brothers Ian and Alistair, who were six years older than her. In 1939, the family moved to Oxford, where her father worked as a pathologist at the university. She attended Oxford High School for Girls, but left at the age of 16 and went to the Oxford Playhouse School with the aim of becoming an actress. Every sorcerer's apprentice had respect for her: Maggie Smith as Minerva McGonagall in "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" Stage successes over decades Maggie Smith took her first steps as a stage actress in 1952 as a member of the Oxford University Dramatic Society in Shakespeare's "The Twelfth Night". Roles in other classics followed, but Smith's greatest successes in the 1950s were as a singer and entertainer in variety shows. She was discovered by the American producer Leonard Sillman, who brought her to the USA for the Broadway show "New Faces of 1956" (premiered in June 1956). When Smith returned to London a short time later, she was a stage star. In 1957/1958 she played the lead role in the revue "Share My Letture" at the Hammersmith Theatre. A large number of engagements in various theatre projects followed. She acted so convincingly that Laurence Olivier finally brought her to his newly founded Royal National Theatre in 1963. Even when she had already started her career in film, Smith kept returning to the stage and enjoyed numerous great successes over the decades. In 2019 she was still on stage in London in Christopher Hampton's one-person play "A German Life" as Brunhilde Pomsel, secretary to Hitler's propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, and was celebrated. An Oscar for best actress Maggie Smith made her film debut in 1956 with a supporting role in Cy Endfield's drama "Child in the House". With her next film role in the crime thriller "Nowhere to Go" (1958) she was nominated for the BAFTA Award as best young actress. Her film career was now just as successful and continuous as her stage career. Smith rarely played the really big parts at first, but she often acted in high-profile company and was convincing in important supporting roles, such as in Anthony Asquith's drama "The V.I.P.s" (1963) alongside Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. At the end of the 1960s and in the 1970s, Smith reduced her stage workload for the benefit of her children, but her presence on screen did not diminish. One of her greatest successes was with the title role in Ronald Neame's "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" (1969). For this role of a committed, liberal teacher, she received the Oscar for best actress in 1970, and the Academy awarded her a second in 1979 as best actress in a supporting role in Herbert Ross' "California Suite" (1978). In this brilliant crime comedy, she was seen alongside Michael Caine, Alan Alda and Jane Fonda. Shakespeare again The eighties and nineties brought Maggie Smith success after success and a whole series of awards. She played Lady Ames in Richard Loncraine's comedy "The Missionary" (1982), won a BAFTA Award for her role as the fisherman's wife Joyce in Malcolm Mowbray's comedy "A Private Function" (1984), played a bitter spinster in James F. Ivory's "Room with a View" (1987), for which she received a Golden Globe, a BAFTA Award and an Oscar nomination, and played a piano teacher in Jack Clayton's romance "The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne" (1987), also receiving a BAFTA Award. Steven Spielberg then brought her in front of the camera for the role of the aged Wendy in his Peter Pan adaptation "Hook" (1991), and she was seen as the Mother Superior alongside Whoopi Goldberg in Emile Ardolino's comedy "Sister Act" (1992) and in Bill Duke's sequel "Sister Act 2". (1993), and alongside Goldie Hawn, Diane Keaton and Bette Midler she played in Hugh Wilson's comedy "The First Wives Club" (1996).