Dame Maggie Smith, ebullient scene-stealer of stage and screen, dies at 89

[+primortal Subscriber²]

British stage and screen actress Maggie Smith, the “Downton Abbey” and “Harry Potter” star who numbers two Oscars, three Emmys and countless stage awards to her credit, died Friday in London. She was 89.

https://variety.com/2024/legit/news/maggie-smith-dead-harry-potter-1236157839/

[Mindovermaster Global Moderator]

RIP. I know she had a problem with cancer when she was in late Harry Potter.

[branfont]

Maggie Smith, a scene-stealing British actress who won Oscars for “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie” and “California Suite,” later enchanting audiences as a professorial witch in the Harry Potter juggernaut and as a sly dowager countess on the TV series “Downton Abbey,” died Sept. 27 at a hospital in London. She was 89.

Her family announced the death in a statement released by publicist Clair Dobbs but did not provide further details.

For most of her six decades in show business, Ms. Smith defined herself mainly as a theatrical actress, with memorable roles in London’s West End and on Broadway. A comedian of incandescent wit and a tragedian of cunning power, she portrayed both Oscar Wilde’s class-conscious Lady Bracknell and Shakespeare’s ruthlessly ambitious Lady Macbeth with spellbinding precision.

“The boundary between laughter and tears is … where Maggie is poised always,” playwright Alan Bennett, who wrote plays and screen treatments for Ms. Smith, once told the New York Times. Critics placed her in a pantheon of exalted “dames” of the stage, including Edith Evans, Peggy Ashcroft, Eileen Atkins, Joan Plowright and Judi Dench.

 

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2024/09/27/maggie-smith-actress-dies-dead-obituary/

[Mindovermaster Global Moderator]

This was posted already.

 

 

[hagjohn]

I liked her. RIP

[Mindovermaster Global Moderator]

[Rigby]

On 27/09/2024 at 10:38, Mindovermaster said:

This was posted already.

 

 

This thread has a much better title though, I think it should be merged with this one.