COUNTRY OF BIRTH

England

INDUSTRY

Entertaiment

TOP ACHIEVEMENTS

Dame Maggie Smith is a British stage and motion-picture actress renowned for her versatility and excellence in both dramatic and comedic roles.

EARLY LIFE AND EDUCATION

Margaret Natalie Smith was born on December 28, 1934, in Ilford, Essex, England. When she was four years old, her family moved to Oxford. Smith attended Oxford High School until age 16, then went on to study acting at the Oxford Playhouse.

EARLY CAREER

In 1952, Smith began her stage career, aged just 17, playing Viola in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night at the Oxford Playhouse, and soon achieved international stage recognition in the Broadway revue New Faces of 1956. Smith joined Britain’s National Theatre company in 1963 and the following year played Desdemona opposite Laurence Olivier’s Othello. She continued acting with the company for another eight years.

ACHIEVEMENTS

Smith had made her screen debut in Nowhere to Go (1958) but international big-screen fame and her first Academy Award arrived with her title role performance in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969). Other noteworthy films include Othello (1965), Travels with My Aunt (1972), California Suite (1978), A Private Function (1984), A Room with a View (1985), The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne (1988), Tea with Mussolini (1999), and Gosford Park (2001). From 2001 to 2011, Smith captured the attention of a new generation for her portrayal of Professor Minerva McGonagall in the Harry Potter movies. She appeared in seven of the eight films. Smith starred as Dowager Countess of Grantham, Violet Crawley, in Downton Abbey (2010–2015), and this role alone resulted in three Emmys, four Screen Actors’ Guild Awards, and her third Golden Globe. Smith has appeared in over 70 stage plays and 60 films, working with the greatest actors, playwrights and directors of the last sixty years.

RECOGNITION

Among her competitive awards, Smith has won two Oscars, five BAFTAs, four Emmys, one Tony Award, three Golden Globes, five Screen Actors Guild Awards, and a record six Best Actress Evening Standard Theatre Awards. Overall, in her career she has won 58 competitive awards from 157 nominations, a total unmatched by any of her peers. She was elected to the American Theatre Hall of Fame in 1994. Smith was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1970, raised to Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in 1990, and Companion of Honor (CH) in 2014.

ADDITIONAL FACTS

• Dame Maggie is one of a small élite of actresses who have achieved the Triple Crown of Acting, by winning Academy, Emmy, and Tony Awards.
• Smith received an Academy Award for her portrayal of a fictional Oscar nominee in California Suite (1978). She is, to date, the only person to win an Oscar for portraying an Oscar loser.
• In 2007, Smith was diagnosed with breast cancer with reports of a full recovery made two years later in 2019.
• Smith has been married twice and has two sons who are both actors.