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Maggie Smith

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Dame Margaret Natalie Smith, DBE (born 28 December 1934), better known as Dame Maggie Smith, is a two-time Academy Award-winning English film, stage, and television actress.

Early life

Smith was born in Ilford, Essex to Nathaniel Smith, who worked at Oxford University, and Margaret Hutton Little, who was Scottish; she has two older twin brothers, Alistair and Ian. She studied at Oxford High School although didn't enjoy the experience.

Career

She started her career at the Oxford Playhouse Theatre with Frank Shelley, and made her first film in 1956. In 1969 she won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role as an unorthodox Scottish schoolteacher in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. She was also awarded the 1978 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role as a brittle actress in California Suite. Other notable roles include the querulous cousin Charlotte in the Merchant-Ivory production of A Room with a View and a vivid supporting turn as the aged Duchess of York in Ian McKellen's film of Richard III. Given the international success of the Harry Potter movies, she is possibly most widely known to younger filmgoers in the role of Professor Minerva McGonagall in the Harry Potter films.

Throughout her career, Smith has been admired for her remarkable technique, on both stage and screen. She has the ability to project a quality of deep emotion (whether comic or tragic) balanced by an innate reserve that combines the appearance of steely control and a hint of something approaching hysteria.

On stage, she has played the title character in the stage production of Alan Bennett's Lady in the Van and starred as Peter Pan in J. M. Barrie's fairytale story Peter Pan. She won a Tony Award in 1990 for Best Actress in a Play for Lettice and Lovage, starring as an eccentric tour guide in an English stately home.

She was created a Commander of the British Empire (CBE) in 1970, and raised to Dame Commander (DBE) in 1990.

Private life

Smith has been married twice. She married Robert Stephens on 29 June 1967, at the Greenwich Registry office and had two sons with him: actors Chris Larkin (born 1967) and Toby Stephens (born 1969). They divorced on 6 May 1974.

She married Beverly Cross (on 23 August 1975 at Guildford Registry Office) and the marriage ended with his death on 20 March 1998.

Academy Awards and Nominations

Preceded by Academy Award for Best Actress
1969
for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress
1978
for California Suite 		Succeeded by

Selected filmography

File:M Smith.jpg
In Gosford Park
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