Oscar-winning actress Dame Maggie Smith dies, aged 89

Dame Maggie Smith, the double Oscar-winning actress who appeared in the Harry Potter films, the Downton Abbey TV series and multiple stage roles, has died at aged 89.

Her sons, actors Chris Larkin and Toby Stephens, said in a statement that the actress died in hospital in London early on Friday.

“It is with great sadness we have to announce the death of Dame Maggie Smith,” it said. “She passed away peacefully in hospital early this morning, Friday 27 September.

“An intensely private person, she was with friends and family at the end. She leaves two sons and five loving grandchildren who are devastated by the loss of their extraordinary mother and grandmother.”

Born in Ilford, Essex, on December 28, 1934, Maggie Smith was an internationally recognised actress for much of her life and one of the few actors to win the awards treble of an Oscar (two), Emmy (four), and Tony, during a long career that started on the stage in the 1950s.

She said she had wanted, from childhood, to become an actress, but she did not see a play or a film until she was a teenager. Nor did she receive much encouragement from her family, particularly one of her grandmothers, who remarked that she could not go into acting “with a face like that”. But none of this deterred her from her ambition.

She was spotted on the stage by Laurence Olivier, who saw her as much more than just a vaudeville performer and invited her to join the newly formed Royal National Theatre Company in London. There, and at the Old Vic, she excelled in both tragedy and comedy, moving easily from Shakespeare to Noel Coward, to Restoration comedy to Ibsen.

Smith, who won her first Oscar for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie in 1969 and gained new fans in the 21st century as the dowager Countess of Grantham in Downton Abbey and Professor Minerva McGonagall in the Harry Potter films, was frequently rated the pre-eminent British actress of a generation that included Vanessa Redgrave and Judi Dench.

She added a supporting actress Oscar for California Suite in 1978, a performance that prompted co-star Michael Caine to say: “Maggie didn't just steal the film, she committed grand larceny.” Other critically acclaimed roles included Lady Bracknell in Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest on the West End stage, and her part in 2001 black comedy movie Gosford Park.

She remained in demand even in her later years, despite her lament that “when you get into the granny era, you’re lucky to get anything”. Smith drily summarised her later roles, including Professor McGonagall, as “a gallery of grotesques”. Asked why she took the role, she quipped: “Harry Potter is my pension.”

Smith was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2008, at the age of 73. She underwent chemotherapy and had to “stagger through” filming the final Harry Potter film, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. At the time she said the experience left her “flattened” and frightened to work in the theatre.

However, she went on to star in at least a dozen films and take on an Emmy-award winning role as the acerbic Violet Crawley, Dowager Countess of Grantham, in Downton Abbey, which she continued to play in the films. She was knighted by Queen Elizabeth and became a Dame in 1990.

Richard Eyre, who directed Smith in a television production of Suddenly Last Summer, said she was “intellectually the smartest actress I’ve ever worked with. You have to get up very, very early in the morning to outwit Maggie Smith”.

Hugh Bonneville, who played Lord Grantham in Downton Abbey, said: “Anyone who ever shared a scene with Maggie will attest to her sharp eye, sharp wit and formidable talent.

“She was a true legend of her generation and thankfully will live on in so many magnificent screen performances. My condolences to her boys and wider family.”

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer called her a “true national treasure”, and said she “introduced us to new worlds with the countless stories she acted over her long career”.