Maggie Smith’s most memorable performances from Shakespeare to the big screen

Dame Maggie Smith was one among Britain’s best-loved and most celebrated actresses, with a profession spanning eight many years.

Her first performances got here on stage within the Fifties, and her final display screen position was only a 12 months in the past, when she starred in The Miracle Membership.

She was one among a choose group of actors to win the treble of massive US awards, with two Oscars, 4 Emmys and a Tony – in addition to seven Baftas and an honorary Olivier Award in her dwelling nation.

Listed below are six of her most best-known performances:

Considered one of Smith’s most iconic early roles was as Desdemona in Shakespeare’s Othello.

Sir Laurence Olivier, who was enjoying the title position, provided her the half on the Nationwide Theatre in 1963.

The manufacturing, with the unique solid, was made into a movie two years later, and Smith nominated for an Academy Award for finest supporting actress.

Reflecting on the role a lot later, Smith instructed the Guardian she did the position “with nice discomfort and was terrified on a regular basis”.

Shakespeare, she added, “is just not my factor”.

The position that introduced Smith worldwide fame got here in 1969 when she performed the determinedly non-conformist trainer within the title position of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.

The movie was tailored from the 1961 novel by Muriel Spark, set in Nineteen Thirties Edinburgh, and the character was based mostly on the writer’s inspirational trainer.

The half received Dame Maggie a finest actress Oscar, and she or he married co-star Robert Stephens.

Smith received essential approval for her position as Betsey Trotwood in a BBC adaptation of David Copperfield on the flip of the century.

The half additionally introduced her Bafta and Emmy nominations.

She starred alongside a younger Daniel Radcliffe, who she would later act with once more within the Harry Potter movies.

On the age of 67, an entire new technology have been launched to the performing marvels of Dame Maggie Smith.

In 2001, she took on the position of Professor Minerva McGonagall in Harry Potter and the Thinker’s Stone.

Her formidable character was in all eight movies and she or he was reportedly the one actor that writer JK Rowling particularly requested for.

In 2007, whereas engaged on Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince, Dame Maggie was recognized with breast most cancers however continued filming. She was given the all-clear after two years of remedy.

Similtaneously showing in Harry Potter, Smith additionally starred in one other big hit – Downton Abbey.

Between 2001 and 2015 she performed Violet Crawley, Dowager Countess of Grantham, in ITV’s British interval drama.

Her efficiency because the quick-witted matriarchal determine received her three Primetime Emmy awards, a Bafta, a Golden Globe and 4 Display screen Actors Guild awards.

She reprised her position of Violet within the Downton Abbey movies in 2019 and 2022.

Within the ultimate movie, her character’s well being deteriorates and she or he dies.

Considered one of Smith’s most well-known later roles was as a homeless girl in The Woman In The Van.

Within the 2015 movie, she starred as Miss Shepherd, who lived in a battered van in playwright Alan Bennett’s driveway for 15 years.

Her efficiency within the comedy-drama was described as “terrifically good” and “magnificent” by critics. She obtained a Golden Globe award and was nominated for a Bafta.

But it surely wasn’t the primary time she had performed Miss Shepherd.

The actress additionally starred because the lead character in 1999 when the play, based mostly on Bennett’s memoir, opened in London’s West Finish.

Her efficiency earned her an Olivier Award nomination for finest actress in 2000.