Obituary for Maggie Smith: Beloved ungracious Countess

Maggie Smith had long been a star in Great Britain when she became immortalized in global pop culture. In 2001, the two-time Oscar winner took on the role of teacher Minerva McGonagall in the film adaptations of the children’s book series “Harry Potter” – which reveals that she always approached her acting calling with humor. She later said that at first she had cringed inwardly when she received instructions with dragons.

Smith then proved to be an equally eccentric figure in the dazzling cast among other stage heroes such as Alan Rickman, Richard Harris and John Hurt with her governess-like appearance in the black head witch outfit. The strict but motherly Professor McGonagall has become one of the most popular characters in the Hogwarts universe over the years. It was the first time, she once recalled, that children recognized her on the street.

Maggie Smith, born on December 28, 1934 in Ilford near London, looks back on seven decades of stage experience. She made her debut on New York’s Broadway in 1956 and, alongside Judi Dench, was one of the outstanding actresses of her generation on the British stage. She acted at the Royal National Theater and the Royal Shakespeare Company, although she admitted that being the national poet was never her thing.

Witty and quick-witted

A productive rivalry developed with Laurence Olivier, who had discovered her at the West End theater The Old Vic. He recognized early on that her comedic repartee also hid a dramatic talent and gave her the role of Desdemona in “Othello” – which also earned her her first Oscar nomination in 1965, also alongside Olivier. In an interview she recalled this time: “I wanted to be a serious actress, but of course that didn’t happen. I played Desdemona with great discomfort and was scared the whole time.”

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Smith’s Broadway appearances eventually opened her doors to Hollywood, where she played alongside Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor and Orson Welles from the early 1960s. She won her first Oscar, of course, for the role of a teacher at a Scottish boarding school who offends with her unorthodox methods (“The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie,” 1969). She received her second Oscar in 1979 for the comedy “The Crazy California Hotel” – as a snobbish Shakespearean actress who was nominated for an Oscar.

Her exalted britishness made her ideal for appearances in the Agatha Christie film adaptations “Death on the Nile” and “Evil Under the Sun” (as well as in the parody “A Corpse for Dessert”). She played the divine sea daughter Thetis in the sandal film “Clash of the Titans” (1981) and in the mid-1980s, typically British, the chaperone Charlotte Bartlett in the Merchant Ivory outfit orgy “Room with a View”. It was a role that Smith embodied brilliantly with its high-necked mockery.

But all the film fame could not prepare her for the adoration that she received from 2010 onwards for her headstrong Countess of Grantham in the aristocratic soap opera “Downton Abbey”. With the widow Violet Crawley, who makes sharp observations about those around her (a reprise of her role in Robert Altman’s 2001 murder mystery “Gosford Park”), Maggie Smith became the face – and voice – of a new British pop almost overnight -phenomenon.

At the age of 75, Smith was recognized by literally everyone on the street. At this point she had already come to terms with playing primarily in corsages and wigs, as she once said. And she will be remembered with this noble, not always entirely serious aura. Maggie Smith died on Friday at the age of 89.