The term "national treasure" is very overused. But nobody would dispute that Dame Maggie Smith was worthy of the title. Over the course of more than 70 years – yes, you read that right – as an actor, she established herself as a master of the craft on both stage and screen. She won two Oscars, five BAFTAs, four Emmys, and a Tony award, among enough other silverware to make Aladdin's cave look like a dusty pawn shop. Put simply, she was a legend.
For me, as someone who was born in the 1990s, Smith is associated with one role above all others: Minerva McGonagall in the Harry Potter films. As the stern-but-fair deputy to Albus Dumbledore at Hogwarts, she brought the books' words to life with her trademark acerbic wit. She was the sort of performer who was so brilliant at insulting people that it was actually something of an honour to be on the end of her acidic tongue. Withering under her icy glare was a privilege.
Smith could verbally eviscerate someone while maintaining a perfect twinkle in her eye. Her barbs could be malicious and lacerating, but they were also delivered with such a zest for life that they were a delight to behold.
She was also every inch capable as a serious actor. Her career started, like so many British thespians, in the world of Shakespeare. But, throughout, comedy played a huge role in her life, with her early work on the stage encompassing numerous farces and outright comedies. She transitioned to film in the 1960s, winning her first Oscar for the title role as the liberated schoolteacher in 1969's The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.
Like so many of her British compatriots, Smith's performances can be tremendously theatrical, which suits a heightened, genre environment. She's one of the most memorable elements of the 1982 Agatha Christie whodunnit Evil Under the Sun, in which she plays an actor-turned-hotelier. It's one of the unsung gems of her fillmography. Her antagonistic relationship with the character played by Diana Rigg is replete with memorable one-liners, all delivered with her familiar devilish twinkle.
And she maintained that twinkle whatever the material. Her performance as McGonagall is so strong precisely because she manoeuvres her way through fantasy jargon like someone who believes in every single word of it. She's the sort of actor who can summon an army of animated suits of armour with the grandiose incantation "piertotum locomotor" and then turn to another character and declare with pure, child-like glee that she'd "always wanted to use that spell". In the parlance of social media, she always understood the assignment.
Smith's later career was characterised by these sorts of roles, in which she could channel her gift for verbose sniping. She reprised one of her stage roles as the title character in The Lady in the Van and added surprising emotional heft to both Best Exotic Marigold Hotel films. Then, of course, there was her tenure as perennial scene-stealer Violet Crawley, Dowager Countess of Grantham, in Downton Abbey – along with Potter, her most memorable role for modern audiences.
It seems wrong to boil such a tremendous actor down to just a few roles, but Smith had a tendency to turn her characters into icons through sheer force of curmudgeonly charisma. Nobody had as much fun being grumpy as she did and, as a result, she has given us dozens of characters to treasure forever, even though she's no longer with us.
So now is the time to say farewell to an acting legend. It's a great opportunity to revisit her most memorable roles, from her unforgettable witchy display in Potter to her array of withering put-downs on Downton Abbey via those extraordinary Oscar-winning turns. But just remember to do what she would've done and enjoy them with a devilish twinkle in your eye.
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