Maggie Smith has died at the age of 89, her family has confirmed. “It is with great sadness we have to announce the death of Dame Maggie Smith,” her two sons, Toby Stephens and Chris Larkin, wrote in a statement. “She passed away peacefully in hospital early this morning, Friday 27th September. An intensely private person, she was with friends and family at the end. She leaves two sons and five loving grandchildren who are devastated by the loss of their extraordinary mother and grandmother.”
Smith won two Oscars over the course of her storied career—for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie in 1970 and California Suite in 1979—with four further Academy Award nominations, not to mention five BAFTA wins, to her name. Before she was sweeping up at awards season, though, Smith was a sylph-like British talent carving out a stellar reputation on the West End stage. The Essex-born actor kicked off her career playing Viola in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night at the Oxford Playhouse, where she studied her craft. It was the beginning of a love affair with the Bard that has endured over the decades: she played Desdemona in Othello (and earned her first Oscar nomination for her performance in the 1965 film adaptation) and starred as Queen Elizabeth, Lady Macbeth, and Cleopatra on stage in the late ’70s.
But her body of work was by no means all theater canon. Smith appeared in comedy capers, Merchant Ivory classics and commercial juggernauts like the Harry Potter franchise, not to mention some stone-cold ’90s classics, The First Wives Club and Sister Act among them. Over the course of 70 years in the spotlight, there wasn’t a genre she didn’t conquered or an emotion she failed to capture.
Below, 20 vintage photographs of the much-loved Maggie Smith from her days as a radiant rising star.
- Photo: Evening Standard/Getty Images1/20
1957
Smith began her career at the Oxford Playhouse.
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Long one of Britain’s most beloved and best-known actors, Smith made her film debut in the 1950s. Here, she appears alongside George Nader in 1959’s Nowhere to Go.
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By then also a leading light of the West End, Smith attended the Evening Standard Theatre Awards in London in 1962.
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Smith, aged around 29.
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Awaiting a train from London to Newcastle upon Tyne in 1964.
Photo: Courtesy Everett Collection6/201965
Smith was nominated for an Oscar for her performance as Desdemona in the film adaptation of Othello.
Photo: Getty Images7/201966
On the set of The Honey Pot in Rome, c. 1966.
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In her dressing room backstage at The Old Vic in London’s West End.
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Smith played a music hall star in Richard Attenborough’s directorial debut, Oh! What a Lovely War (1969).
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Every inch the ’60s nymphet in comedy caper Hot Millions. Smith played Patty, a secretary, opposite Peter Ustinov’s con man Marcus Pendleton.
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1969
The Essex-born actor conquered Hollywood after making a name for herself on the London stage.
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Smith’s performance in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie landed the actor her first Oscar.
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With Lauren Bacall at the 1970 Academy Awards.
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In 1972’s Travels with My Aunt.
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With her first husband, the actor Robert Stephens, at their rented home in Malibu.
Photo: Courtesy Everett Collection16/201976
With David Niven in Murder by Death (1976).
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With fellow Brit Michael Caine in California Suite (1978). Smith won the best-supporting-actress Oscar for her performance in the film.
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With Brooke Shields at the Oscars in 1979.
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With Helena Bonham Carter in James Ivory’s A Room with a View (1985).
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At the London premiere of 1999’s Tea with Mussolini with Lily Tomlin, Judi Dench, director Franco Zeffirelli, and Cher.
