Dame Maggie Smith, the two-time Oscar-winning actor best known for playing Professor Minerva McGonagall in the Harry Potter movie franchise and the acid-tongued Violet Crawley, the Dowager Countess on Downton Abbey, died Friday, her publicist and children confirmed. The iconic actress was 89.
Her professional acting career began in the 1950s and won Academy Awards for her performances in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and California Suite. She was also nominated an additional four times for roles in now classic Hollywood movies such as A Room With A View and Gosford Park.
Both of Smith’s sons, Chris Larkin and Toby Stephens, paid tribute to their mother in a joint statement. “It is with great sadness we have to announce the death of Dame Maggie Smith. She passed away peacefully in hospital early this morning,” they wrote (via The Guardian). “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.”
They added that they wanted to thank “the wonderful staff at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital for their care and unstinting kindness during her final days.” No specific cause was given.
To a generation, she was the ultimate grandmother figure from her work in Sister Act and Hook, something that the actor embraced. During an interview in 2016, Smith told NPR that as a character actor, rather than a “dish”, she was able to age into roles as mothers and grandmothers while still developing her talents rather than losing roles.
