Unpredictable and wickedly acerbic: Maggie Smith must never be boiled down to Harry Potter and Downton

The trouble with Maggie Smith is that she’s watchable in everything and worked like a trouper from the age of 17. A two-time Oscar winner (as well as the proud owner of a Tony for Lettice and Lovage), she left few stones unturned, which makes it hard to do justice to her talent and range. Those who saw her on stage rave about her versatility, but she was just as unpredictable in films and on TV.

Smith, who has died aged 89, is best known for her wickedly acerbic line readings in Downton Abbey. While utterly plausible as a despotic, bitchy and libidinous toff, she could also play downtrodden and democratic, naive and clenched. With the baleful eyes of a bloodhound and an exquisitely raspy voice, she grips you every which way, and her influence on other actors (from Susan Sarandon to Kathryn Hahn) and even musicians (I’d argue she paved the way for Florence Welch) can’t be overstated. To tweak a line of dialogue from one of Smith’s most famous films (as beleaguered Scottish schoolmistress Jean Brodie), if intelligence is to your taste, this woman will give you a feast.

She was funny and intense from the off. Born in Essex, she moved with her family to Oxford when she was four years old, and was cast as Viola in an OUDS production of Twelfth Night (apparently, even when she was at Oxford High School, she knew this was a role she was born to play). Theatre directors like Peter Hall loved her. Before long, she was getting meaty roles at the Old Vic, working alongside Kenneth Williams (a lifelong friend), wowing audiences as Desdemona opposite Laurence Olivier’s Othello, and hanging out with husband-to-be Robert Stephens.

Understandably, Hollywood wanted a piece of her, and she wasn’t the least bit overshadowed by Richard Burton and Liz Taylor in The VIPs. She’s just as good in Jack Clayton’s sublime kitchen-sink drama The Pumpkin Eater. As the semi-gormless Philpot, Smith does full justice to Penelope Mortimer’s jolting novel about delusion, domesticity and infidelity (Philpot’s a thoroughly modern narcissist who, when not bending the ear of the hero, Jo, is secretly shagging Jo’s husband). Smith ensures that the character of Philpot is both chilling and an absolute hoot.

The Oscar for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie put Smith on the map. Some find Smith’s turn a little OTT, but I love her itchy fingers and the way that the character, on so many occasions, seems on the verge of gnawing herself to bits. She never turned her back on the theatre. She worked with Ingmar Bergman, for the National, in Hedda Gabler, and was cast opposite Stephens in Noel Coward’s Private Lives, though by this point the couple’s private life had become more than a little messy, prompting Smith to move to Canada, and later LA, with her and Stephens’s two sons, Chris and Toby.

She won her second Oscar for her supporting role in California Suite (1978, by which time she was married to Beverley Cross), delivering zingers in a way that, even now, feels scandalously modern. She’s Diana Barrie, a doomed and disappointed Oscar nominee, who’s not going down without a fight. Diana says of the Academy members, “I found them singularly unattractive this year; there’s a general decline in facelifts and hair transplants.” She also notes of a rival that she’s “all teeth and teary-eyed”. What makes the scene special is the tears you feel gathering inside Diana herself. As so often with Smith, she plugs you into a character’s vulnerability, even as said character lashes out and draws blood.

open image in gallery

By the late Seventies and early Eighties, Smith was a national treasure, juggling blissfully camp mainstream movies (Death on the Nile, Evil Under the Sun) with smaller indie comedies (The Missionary; A Private Function). Talking of which, you can’t rhapsodise about Smith without mentioning her relationship with Alan Bennett. Their collaboration on the “Bed Among the Lentils” episode of the Talking Heads series was fiendishly smart and funny. Ditto their work on various productions of The Lady in the Van (on stage, radio and film). Smith’s Miss Mary Shepherd – who happens to reside in a van but defies the label “homeless” – was based on a real eccentric in Bennett’s life. Her realness makes your heart thump. No easy tears, here.

Meanwhile, if you want to just flat-out sob and/or rail against the damage caused by the Catholic Church, rent The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne (1987), based on the Brian Moore novel. Not everything about the film works, but Smith is stupendous as the titular spinster Judith. She’s full of surprises, too, in Steven Spielberg’s riff on Peter Pan, Hook (1991), as ancient Wendy (she was only in her fifties at the time, but was made up to look 90). Watch the lustful, yearning way this “granny” strokes the face of Robin Williams (playing a modern-day, adult, amnesiac Peter). Listen to how her voice suddenly sounds like that of an exasperated little girl, as she begs Peter to remember who he is.

open image in gallery

The truth, of course, is that, for many people, Smith’s career began and ended with Downton. Her imperious and naughty Dowager Countess of Grantham may be a sentimental shadow of Oscar Wilde’s Lady Bracknell – whom Smith played at the Aldwych in 1993 – but she is beloved, and so must be mentioned. I’m much fonder, myself, of tremulous Professor Minerva McGonagall, who brightened up many a bog-standard encounter in the Harry Potter films. Minerva’s such a cool witch. The bigger point, however, is that Margaret Natalie Smith CH DBE was iconic in umpteen movies, and should never be boiled down to these two famous parts.

open image in gallery

She certainly knew there was more to her than Violet Crawley. In a typically forthright and entertaining interview, she admitted she’d never watched Downton. She refused to take herself too seriously. A lovely 2018 documentary, called Nothing Like a Dame, shows her gleefully poking fun at everything – even death. Smith, Judi Dench, Eileen Atkins and Joan Plowright discuss funerals and how Miriam Margolyes has hers all planned out. Smith, revelling in her role as head ghoul, quotes Dench as saying that she has “nothing sorted” because she’s “not going to die”. Smith drawls, “Which I know is true!”, then she pulls a face and says, “Shall we talk about something cheerier?” For those mourning the immortal Maggie, here’s a word of advice: track down her lesser spotted work. There’s no better tonic.