She's had conflicts with an iconic star. She loves the roles she's lesser-known for.
She was casting spells while fighting breast cancer. There's a lot you may not know about
the lovely Maggie Smith. Keep watching to learn more about this beloved Dame.
Today's audience might see Maggie Smith's work on the Harry Potter movies as the high point of her
career. However, the actress has worked with the biggest industry stalwarts of several generations.
Her flying start began with an early partnership with cinema legend Laurence Olivier.
It wouldn't be too much to call Olivier the equivalent of Tom Cruise, Leonardo DiCaprio,
and Johnny Depp for his time. He has a whopping 85 acting credits to his name
that span from the 1930s all the way to the late '80s. He also had a keen eye for talent.
According to Michael Coveney's book, Maggie Smith: A Biography, Olivier was so entranced by Smith's
performance in the play The Double Dealer that he personally invited her to join his theater company
in major roles. Unfortunately, Smith's strong personality frequently clashed with Olivier's.
As Coveney told The Mirror, the pair soon became quote, "professional rivals."
"Larry used to say there was a 'merry' war between us."
The conflict led to an altercation in the middle of a problematic performance of
the 1965 play Othello. In a later scene in the play, Olivier, playing Othello,
was supposed to slap Smith, playing Desdemona. According to accounts by Coveney and Smith,
Olivier actually hit Smith, knocking her out. When it comes to acting awards for actresses,
several famous names and characters tend to come to mind. Considering Maggie Smith's career
which began in the 1950s, there are hardly any noteworthy acting awards she's yet to achieve.
A complete list of awards won by Smith would be longer than this video itself.
However, some of the major highlights include two Oscars for her roles in The Prime of Miss
Jean Brodie and California Suite. She's also received five BAFTAs, four Emmys,
and a Tony Award for Lettice and Lovage.
Smith's honors even transcend traditional acting awards.
Most famously, the actress was made a "Dame" Commander of the Order of the British Empire
in 1990. According to Vogue, Smith was also named a Companion of Honor in 2014.
Maggie Smith's love life has had nearly as much drama as her storied career. In 1967,
Smith married celebrated actor Robert Stephens. Unfortunately,
their marriage was not a happy one, and the two got divorced through a mutual agreement.
In 1975, Smith remarried playwright Beverly Cross. The pair had fallen in love years earlier,
but Cross was already married at the time. When they finally came together,
the pair enjoyed more than two decades of wedded bliss until Cross' untimely passing. The actress
still feels the loss of her second husband keenly, as she admitted to The Telegraph:
"It seems a bit pointless, going on one's own, and not having someone to share [a life] with."
Despite the turbulence of her marriage to Stephens,
Smith did have two children with her first husband. Both their sons
followed their parents footsteps and entered the entertainment industry.
Chris Larkin, born Christopher Stevens, decided to change his surname before
entering the industry out of a desire to make it without getting work based on his parents' fame.
Evidently, this approach paid off, as he's been working steadily in films and movies since 1995.
Meanwhile, his brother Toby Stephens has been working in a range of productions since 1992.
He has appeared in movies, British television, stage plays, and even a Bollywood film.
While Maggie Smith has long been Hollywood's go-to actress whenever you need someone who can shrivel
up their co-stars with a single sharp gaze, fellow actress Judi Dench can always command a room as
well. Not only is Dench a fellow Dame, but she and Smith have been close friends for several decades.
The duo met and became firm friends when they were both up-and-coming members of London's Old Vic
Theatre. Apparently, despite being known as the soul of professionalism, Smith told EW the pair
of veteran actresses laugh so much when they're together they struggle not to break on camera.
The idea of the two Dames being friends has tickled the fancy of the public so much that
their relationship inspired a documentary. 2018's Tea With the Dames features Smith and Dench
together with their fellow Dames and veteran actresses Eileen Atkins and Joan Plowright.
While very little actual tea features in the special,
the name of the beverage refers to the golden nuggets of gossip that the Dames
occasionally divulged during the course of their conversation.
Generally accepted to be one of the most talented actresses in the world, Maggie Smith's arresting
eyes make up an integral part of her commanding on-screen presence. The actress' well-known
protuberant gaze can make anyone on the receiving end feel automatically inferior and even guilty
for no reason. That was part of what made Smith such an effective Professor McGonagall.
It turns out the actress' slightly bulging eyes are a result of her battles with an
immune system disorder called Graves' disease. The disorder results in an overproduction of thyroid
hormones that can have a variety of physical manifestations. According to an interview
with The New York Times, Smith was diagnosed with the condition in 1988 at the age of 54.
One of the symptoms Smith suffered from was the protrusion of the eyes,
also known as Graves' ophthalmopathy, which left her eyes painfully sore.
Smith told the Times magazine that she went through, quote, "12 months of near isolation,"
which included radiotherapy and eye surgery to keep the symptoms under control.
While the Harry Potter movies are generally renowned for hitting the nail on the head
with casting most of the characters from J.K. Rowling's iconic book series, Maggie Smith's
portrayal of Minerva McGonagall is considered particularly fitting. With her witch's robes,
spectacles, and perpetually strict expression, Smith's McGonagall looks to have stepped
straight out of the books whenever she appears on screen opposite Daniel Radcliffe's Harry Potter.
For Radcliffe and Smith, their bond was established a year before a single frame
of the first Harry Potter movie was ever shot. In 1999, the two actors starred together in a
two-part BBC television drama adaptation of Charles Dickens's iconic 1850 novel
David Copperfield. Radcliffe played the younger version of the titular character,
while Smith assumed the role of Betsey Trotwood.
While the world of David Copperfield is far removed from Harry Potter, the two
had an important correlation for Radcliffe. In an interview on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,
Radcliffe explained that Smith played a big part in getting him the titular role in Harry Potter.
"Maggie was the person that like recommended me for 'Potter,' so
she's the reason I ended up doing that."
With the Harry Potter films mainly centered around Harry and his friends, Smith's main
responsibility in the film was to look strict and occasionally take points off Gryffindor.
A fellow sufferer was Alan Rickman, who played the controversial character Severus Snape. Like Smith,
Rickman was usually only required to stand in the
back and react with a scowl at whatever Harry happened to be doing at the moment.
The job got so monotonous that Smith and Rickman used to have a hard time trying to squeeze out
different reactions for the same shot. Smith told NPR that when the kids' shots were filmed,
she and her peers would need to film dozens of different reactions,
which could get quite arduous after a while. For the rest of the world, actors like Maggie
Smith and Ian McKellen are serious thespians who only exist to produce one
remarkable performance after another. Like their virtuosic predecessors,
one day these legends will retire having left an irreparable mark on the industry.
The truth is, veteran actors are regular people who have known each other for decades as they
cross paths through their work. It's no surprise that such old friends are not
above pulling each other's legs. When Ian McKellen was hosting Saturday Night Live,
one of the bits that proved the most popular was when McKellen dressed
up as Maggie Smith during a Weekend Update session alongside Jimmy Fallon.
"Best supporting actress. Who's that?"
"Oh, me! Whether I win it or not!"
“Okay. Understood.”
Smith's reaction to the bit was just about as McGonagall as you can expect.
During an interview with the Evening Standard, the actress remarked that she was afraid of going
to see McKellen's one-man show because she feared he'd do an impression of her. She went on to add,
"He does them all the time. I rather acidly told him that I'd done one of him
but people didn't know him well enough to recognize it."
Unfortunately, Smith's hopes of avoiding McKellen's impression of herself were
dashed when he busted another one out during an interview with Graham Norton.
Graves' disease was not the only serious illness that Maggie Smith had to contend with in her life.
In the late 2000s, the actress was diagnosed with breast cancer. Ever the inspiration,
Smith continued to work even while she was receiving chemotherapy to deal with the illness.
In fact, she filmed McGonagall's scenes for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in the middle of
her treatment. The wig she wore helped disguise the fact that her natural hair had fallen out
due to the effects of the chemotherapy. Smith has also stated that she had to hold
on to the railings next to her in her scenes because she was too weak to stand unsupported.
Despite her weakened health, Smith fought hard and finished filming the last Potter
movie. In doing so, she got to film her character's most triumphant scene:
her epic battle with Severus Snape in the Great Hall. Thankfully Smith's treatment worked,
and she was able to return to her regular life.
For the current generation of audiences, Maggie Smith will forever be known as Professor
McGonagall from Harry Potter, or Violet Crawley from Downton Abbey. Smith was perfectly cast in
both roles, and the countless fans who delighted to see her play those parts over so many years
might be saddened to hear the actress herself is not particularly fond of either of them.
Never one to mince her words, Smith made her feelings clear during an interview
for the Evening Standard. She explained that,
while she's incredibly thankful for the opportunity to perform in both Harry Potter
and Downton Abbey, the work itself wasn't particularly gratifying. She told ES,
"[I]t wasn't what you'd call satisfying. I didn't really feel I was acting in those things."
While fans might disagree with her, Smith has played a great range of leading and supporting
roles over a storied career filled with complex and fascinating characters that an actor can
really sink their teeth into. Compared to those, McGonagall and Crawley can seem a bit one-note.
Still, Smith mentions that the one thing she particularly enjoyed about doing the
Harry Potter movies was how thrilled her grandchildren were by the fact that
she was a part of that magical world. These days, Maggie Smith is long past the
age when most professionals begin contemplating retirement. But despite having already achieved
everything an actor could possibly achieve in the field, Smith shows no signs of slowing
down. In fact, the actress intends to keep working as long as the roles keep coming.
Unfortunately for Smith, her rampant success has made aspects of her private life
fairly difficult. She does not seem to like divulging personal information to the public eye,
and she told The Telegraph she can no longer travel alone without being mobbed by fans.
Despite the long hours and the endless gaze of the public, Smith told The Sunday Times, she
would miss the atmosphere on set too much if she ever chose to retire from acting. She explained,
"When you're not working it's scary… And when you are working it's scary because you don't
know if you've got the energy to get through the day. [T]he bleakness of not doing it,
and missing out on the friendships that you make, is too much to bear."
Fortunately, age has proved no obstacle to Smith lighting up the screen with her presence,
and if fans are lucky they can expect to see many more outstanding performances in the coming years.
"What an invigorating prospect."
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