Maggie Smith Biography

MARITAL STATUS
Profession Actress
British nationality
Birth December 28, 1934 (Ilford, Essex – England)

BIOGRAPHY
An essential figure in English theater, Maggie Smith played all the major roles in the classical repertoire (from Shakespeare to Wilde) before making her film debut in 1958 in Nowhere to go , a detective film co-directed by Basil Dearden and Seth Holt .

Commander of the British Empire, Doctor Honoris Causa of the University of St. Andrews and the University of London, she is the winner of two Oscars: that of Best Actress for her composition of an iconoclastic professor in The Beautiful Years by Miss Brodie ( Ronald Neame , 1969), and Best Supporting Actress for the choral California Hotel by Herbert Ross in 1978.

Also awarded two Golden Globes for California Hotel and Room with a View ( James Ivory , 1986), Maggie Smith rubbed shoulders with some of the most prestigious filmmakers. Thus it was directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz ( Waiter for Three Bees , 1967), George Cukor ( A Trip with My Aunt , 1972), and Steven Spielberg ( Hook or the Revenge of Captain Hook , 1991).

An actress as popular as she is demanding, she plays the mother superior of Sister Act 2 , before playing opposite Judi Dench in Tea with Mussolini in 1999.

The following year, she played one of the most important roles of her career in the person of Professor McGonagall from Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone , directed by Chris Columbus . A character that she found again the following year for the second part of the adventures of the sorcerer’s apprentice in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets , then for all the other episodes of the saga until its end, in 2011.

After these forays into the world of wizards, we find the actress in 2002 in Gosford Park by Robert Altman , in the role of Countess Constance of Trentham, which earned her her sixth Oscar nomination.

Maggie Smith subsequently cultivated more modest “so British” projects, with films like Family Secrets (2005), with Rowan Atkinson and Kristin Scott Thomas , or Jane (2007), on the loves of the novelist Jane Austen, played by the young and promising Anne Hathaway .

As the Harry Potter saga draws to a close, he can be heard providing voice for the animated film Gnomeo and Juliet , and appearing in the adaptation of another piece of English heritage, the series of novels ” Dear Mathilda”, released as Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang . Maggie Smith reprises for the occasion the role, which has become recurring in her career, of a smiling, clever and friendly old lady.

We also find her in these same attires in the retirement comedy Indian Palace (2012), in the middle of a cast again 100% British, which notably includes in its ranks Bill Nighy , Tom Wilkinson and his long-time partner Judi Dench , and her Royal Suite in 2015. At the same time, she plays the Dowager Countess of Grantham Violet Crawley in the series Downton Abbey , for six seasons and two films, released in 2019 and 2022.