The film industry produces some of the most unusual stories of marriages and romance in
history, and Dame Maggie Smith is no exception. Her first marriage was rocked by Sir Robert
Stephens’ drinking and cheating. Shortly after they divorced, she married the love of her life,
playwright Beverley Cross. Today, we’re taking a trip to the 60s and 70s and beyond,
including how deeply she struggles to live without her “lovely man.”
Maggie Smith met Beverley Cross on the steps of the Ashmolean, the University of Oxford’s
museum of art and archaeology, when she was 18. He was “a bit older”, “lovely”, and a playwright.
In 1960, Smith was cast in the West End production of Cross’s second play, Strip the Willow. The
actor gave a career-launching performance — and the playwright fell deeply in love with his
star. For her, it was love at first sight as well. Beverley proposed quickly, which proved more than
slightly controversial as he was still married at the time. Beverley begged Maggie to wait out the
lengthy divorce process. She agreed to wait. In a twist of events as dramatic as any play,
while waiting for his divorce to go through, she met Robert Stephens.
“Which was entirely Bev’s fault. Because he made me go to the National Theatre when
I had already said no,” Maggie said. She fell in love with and married the
actor — and Cross, while working on the screenplay of Lawrence of Arabia, got married as well.
Smith later said that her in-built safety mechanism didn’t help her.
She never saw Stephens as dangerous. “Everyone else did. God knows, Larry tried
hard to persuade him not to go anywhere near me. So maybe it was me who was seen as the crazy one.”
Or maybe it was Laurence Olivier identifying himself with Stephens: this was the same
time that Olivier was extricating himself from his relationship with Vivien Leigh.
In 1967, when Smith and Stephens married, Leigh tragically passed away.
Before Maggie and Robert actually got married, they had to go through a few hoops.
They made their plans, but Robert’s divorce from his second wife was not yet finalized
and to complicate matters somewhat, Maggie was pregnant.
How, they wondered, could they keep this latter information from the press?
Eventually, they devised a plan. First, Maggie would take a sabbatical until the baby was born.
Then, if anyone comes sniffing around, she would call her friend, a film critic, who would write
the story exclusively and sympathetically. Sure, it was a front-page scoop, but Maggie’s pregnancy
was nobody’s business but hers and Robert’s. Eventually, the divorce came through,
and they married 10 days before the baby (now known as the actor Chris Larkin) was born,
with no scandalous headlines ensuing. So, the story never got to be written.
For the first few years, Smith said that she was unaware of his drinking.
Everything seemed fine. In 1969, they made The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie together.
Robert Stephens is the actor who was once talked of reverentially as Olivier’s heir.
This electrifying, charismatic star in one season played four major roles at the National Theatre.
His marriage to Maggie Smith became the stuff of legends. They became the first couple of British
theater. Then something happened. Towards the end of the 70s,
his career collapsed, and he disappeared in a mist of obscurity, alcoholism and promiscuity.
While playing the lead in Billy Wilder’s The Private Life Of Sherlock Holmes,
Stephens tried to commit suicide. And after that, it was just hopeless.
“We had two little boys. He didn’t understand. I sure as hell didn’t understand. It got worse,
and then it went on getting worse and worse. In the end, it was destroying
everybody. And he was having so many affairs.” Apparently, Roberts was once forced to tell Smith
about the affairs by his dentist friend. “He said, ‘If you don’t, I will,” so I had to tell her.
Unfortunately, I’d had a slight romance with his receptionist, who was also his mistress!”
They tried for a while. Robert saw medics. When he was diagnosed as hyper-manic, they
asked what it meant, and the doctor said violent moods swings and indiscriminate sexual activity.
“And I thought, ‘that about covers it, really,’” Maggie said.
After six years, in 1973, she got out. “I said ‘It can’t go on’ and he said ‘No, it can’t.’ Honestly,
I don’t think I could have mattered less to him by then. But by then, nothing mattered to him.”
Saying that, Maggie laughed. Not because the memory is funny,
but because that is what comedy sometimes is — the ability to pull back from a tragic
situation and see it as if from the outside. When the rocky Smith-Stephens marriage ended in
divorce, Cross ended his second marriage. Maggie finally married the love of her life in 1975.
They went to Ontario, Canada, where she worked for five years. She never heard from Stephens,
and he never tried to contact his sons. Bev, “that lovely man”, brought them up. And they
spent the next 23 years hand in hand. Tragically, Beverly passed away at 66 of heart disease.
While they were together, she used to never talk about Stephens. “Not while Bev was alive.
It seemed somehow wiser. But I can talk safely now, now that there’s nobody left to be hurt.”
Maggie also said that she never stopped loving Robert. “I don’t see how you can, really.
I have two wonderful sons, and he is the reason for that.”
And towards the end of his life, they were all friends again.
In 1993, Toby was playing Coriolanus at the Royal Shakespeare Company when Stephens was playing
Falstaff and Lear. She rang him in his dressing room the night he was to open in King Lear.
What did Maggie say to her former husband? “What you always say when
it’s Lear,” she replied. “Good luck.” No matter how turbulent the years of
Maggie Smith’s marriage to Robert Stephens were, they did result in something positive
with the birth of their children, Chris Larkin (born Christopher Stephens) and Toby Stephens.
Both of them have managed to establish their own acting careers. You can see Toby in the
recently released third and final season of sci-fi series Lost in Space on Netflix.
With the eventual marriage of her sons, Smith is now a grandmother to five youngsters,
who are most thrilled that she’s a part of the Harry Potter universe.
In 2013, it was the first time she had spoken about Beverley’s death in several years. The
last time she mentioned it, she was particularly gloomy about it. “I still miss him so much it’s
ridiculous. People say it gets better, but it doesn’t. It just gets different, that’s all.” She
has never got over the loss of Bev and never will. When asked if she hoped to fall in love again,
she was unequivocal. “Absolutely not,” she said. “No way.”
Dame Maggie often says in interviews that Cross was the “rock” of her life.
At the time of his death, she was appearing in A Delicate Balance at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket.
Showing great strength and perseverance, she continued in the role until the end of its run.
Smith doesn’t refrain from saying how lonely she is after losing the love of her life almost
25 years ago. She admits that she is struggling to live without Beverley. She often dreams about him.
“I don’t know. It seems a bit pointless. Going on one’s own and not having someone to share it with.
Jane Birkin’s mother Judy Campbell once said an extraordinary thing to me when her husband died;
that it was a strange feeling you were not number one with anybody.”
And when she found herself filming in Oxford, she went back to her old childhood haunts
and to the steps of the Ashmolean where she met him all those years ago. “That
weird place that changes every three years and yet remains always the same.
You know what’s awful? What’s awful is that it is all all right.”
She finds solace in her work and tries to stay busy. Maggie can act her way into and
out of anything. Her range is phenomenal: Lady Macbeth or Desdemona opposite Laurence
Olivier’s Othello? No problem. The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie? An Oscar-winning performance.
Later on, she became a scene-stealer as Professor McGonagall in the Harry Potter series
and the Dowager Countess of Grantham in Downton Abbey. The list goes on and on.
In the process, the numerous awards she has received include two Oscars,
five Baftas, three Emmys, three Golden Globes and a Tony. Few, if any, other actors can match that.
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,
Maggie shows no signs of slowing down. In fact, the actor intends to keep working
as long as the roles keep coming. At the age of 87 and having survived
breast cancer, she could be seen to be in the Indian Summer of her career,
except that when you look at her achievements and volume of work, it always seems to have
been high summer for her and still is. In an interview for The Sunday Times,
Smith explained that she would miss the atmosphere on set too much if she ever
chose to retire from acting, despite the demands of the profession taking a toll on her energy.
“When you’re not working, it’s scary,” she explained. “And when you are working,
it’s scary, because you don’t know if you’ve got the energy to get through the day.”
She added that “the 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. She still has projects lined up and on the go.