Full list by date of death

(Dame) Maggie Smith

Actress

Born - 28 December 1934, Ilford, Essex, England
Died - 27 September 2024

Red-haired, sharply-spoken, extremely dominant English actress. For a while her film roles were softer than the parts she played on stage, until she began to go in for acidulous spinsters of waspish delivery, beginning with Travels With My Aunt in 1972. Twice an Oscar-winner (The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1968) and California Suite (1978) and nominated for several more, she won new audiences in her latter years both in the Harry Potter films and as the querulously disapproving Lady Grantham in the popular Downton Abbey TV series and subsequent films. Created Dame in 1989, her other films included Child in the House (1956), Nowhere to Go (1958), Go to Blazes (1961), The VIPs (1963), The Pumpkin Eater (1964), The Honey Pot (1966), Hot Millions (1968), Oh! What a Lovely War (1969), Love and Pain and the whole damn thing (1972), Murder by Death (1976), Death on the Nile (1978), Quartet (1981), The Missionary (1982), A Private Function (1984), A Room With a View (1985),The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne (1987), The Cherry Orchard (1990), Sister Act (1992), Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit (1993), Richard III (1995), The First Wives Club (1996), Tea With Mussolini (1999), Gosford Park (2001), Ladies in Lavender (2004), Becoming Jane (2007), Nanny McPhee Returns (2010), The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2011), My Old Lady (2014), The Lady in the Van (2015), A Boy Called Christmas (2021) and The Miracle Club (2023), her last. Divorced from actor Robert Stephens, she married writer Beverley Cross, who died at 66 in 1998.