Dame Maggie Smith

Dame Maggie Smith (Dame Margaret Natalie Cross), 1934-, English actress. Smith first appeared on stage in Twelfth Night (1952). With her precise, sometimes rapid-fire, articulation and her meticulous stagecraft, she is adept at both comedic and serious roles. Smith worked with the Old Vic Company and the National Theatre, giving notable performances in As You Like It, Richard II, The Rehearsal, and Private Lives. In 1989 she scored a personal triumph in London and New York in Lettice and Lovage. Among her films are Othello (1966), Travels with My Aunt (1973), A Room with a View (1985), and A Private Function (1985). She has won two Academy Awards, for The Prime of Miss Brodie (1969) and, ironically, in the role of a nominated actress on Academy Award night, in California Suite (1978). More recent performances in plays include Three Tall Women (1991) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1992); in films, The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne (1991) and The Secret Garden (1993). She was created a dame commander, Order of the British Empire, in 1990.

Smith, Dame Maggie Natalie [ Margaret Natalie Smith ] (1934– ), English actress, with a flair for high comedy but also outstanding in dramatic roles. She made her stage début in Oxford in 1952, playing Viola in an OUDS production of Twelfth Night, and after training at the Oxford Playhouse Drama School went to New York to appear in the revue New Faces of '56. Back in London she scored a big success as the leading comedienne in another revue, Share My Lettuce (1957), and then went to the Old Vic, where she was admirable as Lady Plyant in Congreve's The Double Dealer in 1959 and played Maggie Wylie in Barrie's What Every Woman Knows in 1960, in which year she took over from Joan Plowright the part of Daisy in Ionesco's Rhinoceros. Her growing reputation was enhanced by performances in Anouilh's The Rehearsal (1961), Peter Shaffer's double bill The Private Ear and The Public Eye (1962), and Jean Kerr's Mary, Mary (1963). She next joined the National Theatre company at the Old Vic, being a superb Silvia in Farquhar's The Recruiting Officer and a year later showing unsuspected depths of passion as Desdemona to the Othello of Laurence Olivier. Among her later parts with this company were Hilde Wangel in Ibsen's The Master Builder, Myra in a revival of Coward's Hay Fever (both 1964), Beatrice in Much Ado about Nothing, and the title-role in Strindberg's Miss Julie (both 1965). In 1970 she excelled as Mrs Sullen in Farquhar's The Beaux' Stratagem and Hedda Gabler in Ingmar Bergman's production of Ibsen's play, in which she carried a strong charge of sexual frustration. On leaving the National Theatre she was a much-acclaimed Amanda in Coward's Private Lives (1972; NY, 1975). She then spent several seasons at the Stratford (Ontario) Festival, where she was seen in many important roles including Cleopatra in Antony and Cleopatra, Millamant in Congreve's The Way of the World, and Masha in Chekhov's Three Sisters (all 1976), and Lady Macbeth (1978). In 1979 she took over from Diana Rigg in the London production of Tom Stoppard's Night and Day and then played the role in New York, after which she returned to Stratford, Ontario, where she starred as Virginia Woolf in Edna O'Brien's Virginia in 1980 (London, 1981). At Chichester and in London in 1984 she again played Millamant, and in 1987 (NY, 1990) she scored one of her biggest successes in a made-to-measure role in Shaffer's comedy Lettice and Lovage.