- British actor Dame Maggie Smith died at age 89, her family confirmed.
- The actor had a storied career on both stage and screen, winning Tony, Emmy, and Oscar awards.
- Smith was well known for roles in the television series “Downton Abbey” and the “Harry Potter” films.
Dame Maggie Smith, the legendary British actor best known for her roles in “Harry Potter” and “Downton Abbey,” has died, her family confirmed to Business Insider in a statement sent by Smith’s agent.
She was 89.
“She passed away peacefully in hospital early this morning, Friday 27th September,” the statement from her sons Toby Stephens and Chris Larkin read. “An intensely private person, she was with friends and family at the end.”
Born in 1934, Smith’s prominent career began onstage at the Oxford Playhouse when she was 17. She made her Broadway debut in 1956 and earned three Tony nominations throughout her career, winning one in 1990 for “Lettice and Lovage.”
Her onscreen career began to develop in the 1950s, and she earned her first British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) nomination in 1958 for “Nowhere to Go.” A six-time Oscar nominee, Smith won twice: in 1970 for “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie” and then in 1979 for “California Suite.” Smith later became well known for her role as Professor Minerva McGonagall in the “Harry Potter” films, a role she said helped her bond with her grandchildren.
The actor also had a significant television career, and won her first Emmy award for her role as Mrs. Delahunty in the 2003 HBO made-for-television movie “My House in Umbria.”
But her most prolific TV role was as Violet Crawley on “Downton Abbey,” which earned her three Emmy awards. The series ran for six seasons, and Smith returned for two subsequent “Downton Abbey” films, which were released in 2019 and 2022.
Smith was honored with a damehood in 1990 and joined fellow dames Judi Dench, Eileen Atkins, and Joan Plowright for an iconic documentary called “Tea With the Dames” in 2018.
In 2019, after a decade-long absence from theater, she returned to the stage to star in Sir Christopher Hampton’s one-woman play “A German Life.” She played Brunhilde Pomsel, the secretary of Nazi Germany Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels.
Smith was diagnosed with Graves’ disease, an autoimmune disease that affects the thyroid, in 1988. She underwent radiotherapy and had eye surgery to stop eye protrusions that occurred as a result of the disease. She was later diagnosed with breast cancer in 2007 and went through chemotherapy while filming “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.”
She married Sir Robert Stephens in 1967. They had two sons, actors Toby Stephens and Chris Larkin. Smith and Stephens divorced in April 1975, and two months later, Smith married playwright Alan Beverley Cross. They remained married until his death in March 1998.
Smith is survived by her two sons and five grandchildren “who are devastated by the loss of their extraordinary mother and grandmother,” the family’s statement said.
Anjelica Oswald contributed to a previous version of this story.
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