You could probably survey 100 people at random on what they most remember Dame Maggie Smith for and you’d probably get dozens of responses. Smith, who died on Sept. 27 at the age of 89, had a body of work many actors would dream of.
It is hard to summarize her work with just a handful of movies as is often the case. Smith won two Oscars (One for Lead Actress and the other for Best Supporting Actress) for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and California Suite, respectively. She was nominated for four more awards for Best Supporting Actress for 1965 Othello where she played Desdemona to Sir Laurence Oliver’s Othello. (It was a different time. It wouldn’t fly today.) She would be nominated in the Lead Actress category in 1972 for Travels with my Aunt and in the Best Supporting Actress category for 1985 A Room with a View and 2001’s Gosford Park.
It’s odd while most actors are worried about roles as they get older, but the last 25 years of Smith’s career was when she would gain a huge new following of fans. Even though Chris Columbus said he wanted an All-English cast for Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, aka Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, can you even imagine anyone else beside Dame Smith for Professor Minerva McGonall.
There’s just something about Smith’s look and stye that she seemed to ease into roles like this as well as Violet Crawley, Dowager Countess of Grantham on Downton Abbey. I never got into the series but Smith seemed to fit it to a T. I doubt she probably even had to audition. The role would earn her three Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series in 2011, 2012 and 2016. She was nominated in the same category for 2013 and 2014 seasons.
It would be hard to summarize a life’s work in a blog post. Smith was one of those actresses who just seemed to gravitate toward roles and you couldn’t imagine anyone else in them. As the strict stoic Mother Superior in the Sister Act movies, she seemed to be perfectly cast as the opposite to Whoopi Goldberg’s character. But she wasn’t a bad person. She was just worried about the effects of trying new things. She quickly became a protector of Goldberg’s character once she learned she was in trouble because that’s what nuns do.
And then, there was her role as Grandy Wendy in Steven Spielberg’s Hook. Her role bookends the fantasy tale as she played an elderly version of Wendy Darling who raised Robin Williams’ Peter Pan when he decided to leave Never Never Land for the real world. Spielberg has called Hook one of his least favorite works. But for many people who were kids themselves when it was released have found the magic that he was going for, especially now 10 years after the death of Williams.
But a decade before Hook, Smith was cast as Greek goddess Thetis in the 1981 cult classic Clash of the Titans where she played a more antagonistic role. Co-starring along with other veteran actors such as Olivier, Claire Bloom and Burgess Meredith, she basically sets the entire plot into play as she puts the young Perseus (Harry Hamlin) to be a suitor for Andromeda (Judi Bowker) and injures her deformed son Calibos (Neil McCarthy). Insulted and angry at Claibos’ injury, she demands that Andromeda be sacrificed to the Kraken. So, Perseus goes on the journey to kill Medusa and take her head back to defeat the Kraken.
On stage, she won a Tony Award for Best Actress for her role in Lettice and Lovage, a role that was written specifically for her. She seemed to be a delight to watch no matter what the role was, often taking roles in some of the most unlikely movies. She had a small role in The First Wives Club. In Murder by Death, she played a parody of the polished and proper detectives such as Dashell Hammett’s Nick and Nora Charles alongside David Nivens.
And in the awful adaptation of The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, she was the only one who seemed to understand what the role undertook as she chain smoked cigarettes even though she had to lug around an oxygen tank. Some of the movie and TV roles weren’t the best, but many actors can’t be high and mighty about their roles. Hook, Clash of the Titans and the Harry Potter movies are basically kids movies.
But sometimes the best actors know that the material calls to them and if she was needed a paycheck, she never phoned it in. Rest in power, Dame Smith. Your body of work will live on.
What is your favorite role of hers? Please comment.
Zane Says 