Maggie Smith, star of stage, film and ‘Downton Abbey,’ has died at 89
nypost.comTV costume drama ended its run in 2015 after five seasons, Smith said in an interview with Graham Norton that she heaved a sigh of relief.“By the time we were finished, she must’ve been 110,” Smith joked of her aging character. “She couldn’t go on and on and on.
It didn’t make sense.”The actress also admitted she never once watched the massively popular series. “I’ve got the box set,” she said.Smith nonetheless played vicious Violet Crawley in two successful films: 2019’s “Downton Abbey” and 2022’s “Downton Abbey: A New Era.”But, outside of “Downton” and “Potter,” the classically trained performer took on an extraordinary breadth of roles — from Shakespearean ingenues to strict nuns — for which she won two Academy Awards, four Emmy Awards, three Golden Globe Awards, five BAFTA Awards and a Tony Award.Smith got her start onstage at 17, playing Viola in a production of “Twelfth Night” in Oxford, England in 1952.
Just five years later she made her Broadway debut in “Faces of ‘56” at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre.Over the next 34 years, she appeared in three more Broadway shows, including Noel Coward’s “Private Lives” in 1975 and “Lettice and Lovage” in 1990.
The actress loved the theater, appearing in countless West End shows, spending eight years with Britain’s Royal National Theatre and then performing in Shakepeare plays at the Stratford Festival in Canada from 1976 to 1980.On the big screen, Smith won her first Oscar for “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie” in 1970.
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