Oscar, Emmy, and Tony-winning actor Maggie Smith played everything from wistful ingenues in Shakespeare to Harry Potter’s Prof. McGonagall and the Dowager Countess in Downton Abbey. She died Friday at age 89.
Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP
Dame Maggie Smith – whose acting career spanned seven decades and traversed the stage and screen – has died at age 89. She passed away peacefully surrounded by family and friends on Friday morning, her publicist confirmed.
Smith was once so slender and delicate as Desdemona that Laurence Olivier’s Othello could easily smother her with a pillow. By the end of her career, no one would’ve dared try.
Though she was fine-featured and stood barely five-foot-five, casting directors realized early-on that her characters would inevitably appear indomitable, whether she was bristling with epithets in Shaw, casting spells as Harry Potter’s Professor McGonagall, or silencing opposition with sideways glances as Downton Abbey’s formidable Lady Violet.