UK Harry Potter actress Maggie Smith dies aged 89
One of the few to win the treble of an Oscar (two), Emmy (four), and Tony, Smith’s career began in the 1950s and included Downton Abbey and the Harry Potter films
British actress Maggie Smith, an award winning Shakespearean actress and double Oscar winner who later appeared in the Harry Potter films, has died aged 89, the BBC reported on Friday.
One of the few actors to win the treble of an Oscar (two), Emmy (four), and Tony, Smith’s long career started on the stage in the 1950s.
But for many younger fans in the 21st century, she was best-known as Professor McGonagall in all seven Harry Potter films, and the Dowager Countess in the hit TV series and movie spin-offs of Downton Abbey, a role that seemed tailor-made for an actress known for purse-lipped asides and malicious cracks.
Her first Academy Award nomination was for her turn playing Desdemona opposite Laurence Olivier’s Othello in 1965, before winning the Oscar for her role as an Edinburgh schoolmistress in 1969’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.
She won her second Oscar for her supporting role in the 1978 comedy California Suite, a performance that prompted co-star Michael Caine to say: “Maggie didn’t just steal the film, she committed grand larceny.”