She appeared in numerous productions at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Ontario, to acclaim from 1976 through to 1980.
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In 2010, she appeared as Violet, Dowager Countess of Grantham, in the British period drama Downton Abbey, taking part in the second series also which was screened in the Autumn of 2011. She also plays an older Wendy in the Peter Pan movie, Hook and Mrs. Due to the international success of the Harry Potter movies, she is now widely known for playing the role of Professor Minerva McGonagall, opposite Daniel Radcliffe, with whom she'd previously worked in the 1999 BBC television adaptation of David Copperfield, playing Betsie Trottwood.
Other notable roles include the querulous Charlotte Bartlett in the Merchant-Ivory production of A Room with a View, a vivid supporting turn as the aged Duchess of York in Ian McKellen's film of Richard III, and a little known but powerful performance as Lila Fisher in the 1973 film Love and Pain and the Whole Damn Thing with Timothy Bottoms. Recent examples of this would include the judgmental sister in Ladies in Lavender and the cantankerous snob Constance, Countess of Trentham in Gosford Park, for which she received another Oscar nomination. Indeed, many of her more mature roles have centred on what Smith refers to as her "gallery of grotesques", playing waspish, sarcastic or plain rude characters.
Smith appeared in Sister Act in 1992 and had a major role in the 1999 film Tea with Mussolini, where she appeared as the formidable Lady Hester. She also starred with Palin in the black comedy A Private Function in 1984. Afterwards, on hearing that Michael Palin was about to embark on a film ( The Missionary) with Smith, Caine is supposed to have humorously telephoned Palin, warning him that she would steal the film. ( Zoe Caldwell won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play when she created the role in New York.) Smith was also awarded the 1978 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role as the brittle actress Diana Barry in California Suite, acting opposite Michael Caine. In 1969, she won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance as an unorthodox Scottish schoolteacher in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, a role originally created on stage by Vanessa Redgrave in 1966 in London. She became a fixture at the Royal National Theatre in the 1960s, most notably for playing Desdemona in Othello opposite Laurence Olivier and winning her first Oscar nomination for her performance in the 1965 film version. She began her career at the Oxford Playhouse with Frank Shelley and made her first film in 1956. Smith has had an extensive career both on screen and in live theatre, and is known as one of Britain's pre-eminent actresses. She has older twin brothers, Alistair and Ian. She is the daughter of Margaret Smith (née Hutton), a Glasgow-born secretary, and Nathaniel Smith, a Newcastle upon Tyne-born public health pathologist who worked at Oxford University. Margaret Natalie Smith was born in Ilford, Essex. She currently stars in the critically acclaimed drama, Downton Abbey as Violet Crawley, the Dowager-Countess of Grantham, for which she has won an Emmy-award.
She has also appeared in a number of widely-popular films, including Hook (1991), Sister Act (1992), and as Professor Minerva McGonagall in the Harry Potter series.
Her critically acclaimed films include Othello (1965), The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969), California Suite (1978), Clash of the Titans (1981), A Room with a View (1985), and Gosford Park (2001). She has won numerous awards for acting, both for the stage and for film, including five BAFTA Awards (plus the BAFTA Fellowship Award), two Academy Awards, two Golden Globes, two Emmy Awards, a Laurence Olivier Award, two SAG Awards, and a Tony Award. Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Pictureĭame Margaret Natalie Smith, DBE (born 28 December 1934), better known as Maggie Smith, is an English film, stage, and television actress who made her stage debut in 1952 and is still performing after 59 years. Best Actress - Motion Picture Musical or Comedy