Goodbye Maggie Smith… The interpreter of Minerva McGonagall in the “Harry Potter” saga is dead, announces AFP on September 27, 2024.
Maggie Smith, who many know first for Sister Actbecame a huge star thanks to the role of Minerva McGonagall in Harry Potter. Here is everything you need to know about the late actress, whose death at the age of 89 was announced on September 27, 2024. She died at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in London.
Maggie Smith: what films has she starred in?
Maggie Smith grew up with a professor father British teacher at Oxford and a Scottish secretary mother. Passionate about comedy and theater, she studied drama at the Oxford Playhouse School in the 1950s. An effective way to learn your skills and then take on the theatrical world.
After some success in the theater from 1956 with New Face 56′ in New York, cinema opened its arms to him. We owe him films such as California Hotel (1978), Sister Act (1992), Nanny MacPhee (2010), Harry Potter or recently Downton Abbey (whose series was adapted for the cinema)…
She won two Oscars: for The Beautiful Years of Miss Brodie (1969) and the other for his secondary role in California Hotel (1978).
Who was Maggie Smith’s husband?
In 1967, she married actor Robert Stephens. with whom she had two sons: Chris Larkin (born in 1967) and Toby Stephens (born in 1969). A union which unfortunately did not last long since the couple divorced in 1975.
After this breakup, she had a romance with Beverly Cross. The British playwright and screenwriter was the greatest love of the actress’s life. “I don’t think I would find anyone who could compete with Bev,” she admitted to the American media CBS NEWS. An idyll which lasted 23 years and was marked by the death of the latter at the age of 66. A sudden death occurred due to an aneurysm.
Where did Maggie Smith live?
Far from the noise of big cities, it is in the small village of Lurgashall in West Sussex, England, where Maggie Smith lived. A little corner of paradise where tranquility and discretion reign.
As evidenced by the English site Velvetropes, she resided in a “15th-century red brick house, purchased by Maggie Smith and her late husband, the playwright Beverley Cross, in 1981.” And “set in extensive grounds in the English countryside. This five bedroom farmhouse includes three barns, a vineyard, a stable and an orchard of apples, blackberries, pears, plums and walnuts.”
Maggie Smith battled a terrible illness
When she was 74, she faced breast cancer. In two years, she lived through the illness without complaining publicly and continuing as best she could filming the saga. Harry Potter (except for the shutter Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, part 1) wearing wigs, “I didn’t mind wearing the wig. I had an egg head.”
Unfailing resilience which showed its courage and determination to continue its profession, “It’s so exhausting, this illness clips your wings and I don’t know what, if anything, the future holds for me,” she told the English weekly The Times.
The final years of Maggie Smith
She once again slipped into the shoes of Violet Crawley for the filming of the film Downton Abbey in 2022. The world of fashion also gave her the opportunity to be the new face of the Spanish brand Loewe. A collaboration that made noise around the world and demonstrated that older women should also feel good about themselves. Maggie Smith was also the poster girl for the film The Miracle Club.
