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Maggie Smith

Maggie Smith
Maggie Smith
Born: Dec 28, 1934 in Ilford, Essex, England
Occupation: Actor
Active: '60s-2000s
Major Genres: Comedy, Drama
Career Highlights: A Room With a View, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
First Major Screen Credit: Nowhere to Go (1958)
26 Videos for Maggie Smith
Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang (2010) Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002) The Last September (1998)
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009) Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002) Richard III (1995)
Becoming Jane (2007) Gosford Park (2001) Hook (1991)
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007) Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (2001) The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne (1987)
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005) Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (2001) A Room With a View (1986)
Keeping Mum (2005) Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (2001) A Private Function (1984)
Ladies in Lavender (2005) All the King's Men (1999) Clash of the Titans (1981)
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004) David Copperfield (1999) Death on the Nile (1978)
Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood (2002) Tea With Mussolini (1999)
Photos


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Biography:

Breathes there a theatergoer or film fan on Earth who has not, at one time or another, fallen in love with the sublimely brilliant British comedic actress Dame Maggie Smith? The daughter of an Oxford University pathologist, Smith received her earliest acting training at the Oxford Playhouse School.

In 1952, she made her professional stage bow as Viola in {+Twelfth Night}. Four years later she was on Broadway, performing comedy routines in Leonard Sillman's {+New Faces of 1956}; that same year, she made her first, extremely brief screen appearance in Child in the House (she usually refers to 1959's Nowhere to Go as her screen debut). In 1959, Smith joined the Old Vic, and in 1962 won the first of several performing honors, the London Evening Standard Award, for her work in the West End production {+The Private Ear/The Public Eye}.

Her subsequent theatrical prizes include the 1963 and 1972 Variety Club awards for {+Mary Mary} and {+Private Lives}, respectively, and the 1990 Tony Award for her performance in the Broadway play {+Lettice and Lovage}. In addition, Smith has won Oscars for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969) and California Suite (1978), and British Film Academy awards for A Private Function (1985), A Room With a View (1986), and The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne (1987). These accolades notwithstanding, Smith has had no qualms about accepting such lightweight roles as lady sleuth Dora Charleston (a delicious Myrna Loy takeoff) in Murder By Death (1976), the aging Wendy in Steven Spielberg's Peter Pan derivation Hook (1991), and the Mother Superior in Whoopi Goldberg's Sister Act films of the early '90s.

During the same decade, she also took more serious roles in Richard III (1995), Washington Square (1997), and Tea With Mussolini (1999). On a lighter note, her role in director Robert Altman's Gosford Park earned Smith her sixth Oscar nomination. Made a Dame Commander in 1989, Smith was elected to the Theatre Hall of Fame in 1994.

Previously married to the late actor Sir Robert Stephens, she is the wife of screenwriter Beverly Cross and the mother of actors Toby Stephens and Chris Larkin. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide.