Oscar-winning British actor Maggie Smith, a star of stage and display for greater than seven a long time, died in hospital in London on Friday, her sons introduced, prompting a flood of tributes.
“It’s with nice unhappiness we have now to announce the dying of Dame Maggie Smith. She handed away peacefully in hospital early this morning,” Chris Larkin and Toby Stephens mentioned in an announcement.
Smith — who received a Tony, two Oscars, three Golden Globes and 5 Baftas — achieved late-career worldwide fame for her depiction of the acerbic Dowager Countess of Grantham Violet Crawley within the hit tv collection “Downton Abbey”.
The Bafta TV and movie academy mentioned in an announcement that it was “saddened” to listen to of her dying, calling her “a legend of British stage and display”.
It gave her a particular award and fellowship to acknowledge her acclaimed profession, which Prime Minister Keir Starmer mentioned had made her a “true nationwide treasure”.
Born in 1934 in Oxford in central England, the daughter of an Oxford professor of pathology, Smith made her stage debut in 1952 with the Oxford College Dramatic Society.
She received a greatest actress Oscar for “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie” in 1969 and for greatest supporting actress for her depiction of Desdemona in “Othello” in the identical 12 months.
“An intensely non-public individual, she was with family and friends on the finish,” her sons, each actors, mentioned.
“She leaves two sons and 5 loving grandchildren who’re devastated by the lack of their extraordinary mom and grandmother,” they mentioned, including their thanks for all of the “sort messages and help” that they had obtained.
‘Formidable expertise’
Famed for her scene-stealing charisma, Smith’s lengthy and profitable profession obtained began with a string of successes in London’s West Finish and on Broadway within the Nineteen Fifties.
She famously appeared reverse Laurence Olivier in an adaptation of Shakespeare’s “Othello” in 1959.
This led to her becoming a member of Olivier’s celebrated Sixties Nationwide Theatre firm the place she earned essential acclaim alongside her husband, the actor Robert Stephens.
Smith’s marriage to heavy-drinking Stephens, with whom she had her two sons, collapsed in 1973 they usually divorced two years later.
She remarried shortly after to the screenwriter Beverley Cross, who died in 1998.
In current a long time, a few of her greatest identified movies included “Gosford Park” (2001), “The Finest Unique Marigold Lodge” (2012) and “The Girl within the Van” (2015).
Her work on the wildly fashionable “Downton Abbey” and the “Harry Potter” movies additionally launched her to a youthful technology.
Such was the attraction of “Downton Abbey” she mentioned in 2017 she might not exit with out being recognised.
“It’s ridiculous — I led a superbly regular life till Downton Abbey,” she instructed the British Movie Institute.
“I might go to theatres, I might go to galleries and issues like that by myself. And now I can’t,” she mentioned.
Actor Hugh Bonneville, who performed the son of the dowager duchess within the interval drama, mentioned: “Anybody who ever shared a scene with Maggie will attest to her sharp eye, sharp wit and formidable expertise.
“She was a real legend of her technology and fortunately will reside on in so many magnificent display performances. My condolences to her boys and wider household.”
Smith was made a Dame of the British Empire in 1990 by Queen Elizabeth II.
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