Maggie Smith, legendary ‘Harry Potter,’ ‘Downtown Abbey’ star, dies at 89

Dame Maggie Smith, best-known for her roles in the Harry Potter franchise and Downton Abbey, has died. She was 89 years old.

The prolific star’s family issued a statement about Smith’s death through her publicist. Smith died on Friday morning in hospital, though a cause of death has not yet been announced.

“It is with great sadness we have to announce the death of Dame Maggie Smith,” her sons, Chris Larkin and Toby Stephens, said in a statement.

“An intensely private person, she was with friends and family at the end. She leaves two sons and five loving grandchildren who are devastated by the loss of their extraordinary mother and grandmother.”

“We would like to take this opportunity to thank the wonderful staff at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital for their care and unstinting kindness during her final days,” the statement continued. “We thank you for all your kind messages and support and ask that you respect our privacy at this time.”

Smith was one of the most recognizable British actors in film and television. Her illustrious career spanned over seven decades, though she earned international admiration particularly for roles as Professor Minerva McGonagall in the Harry Potter series and as Violet Crawley in Downtown Abbey.

She won two Oscars during her lifetime, for 1970 film The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, and later for California Suite in 1979.

Smith also received Academy Award nominations as a supporting actress in Othello, Travels with My Aunt, Room with a View and Gosford Park.

Her career began on the stage in the 1950s, where she first earned a reputation as a talented, and often scene-stealing, actor.

By her 80s, Smith on occasion joked it was more difficult to find acting work, especially when competing for roles alongside the likes of Dame Judi Dench.

Smith once drily summarized her later roles as “a gallery of grotesques,” including Professor McGonagall. When she was asked why she took the role, she quipped: “Harry Potter is my pension.”

Smith had a reputation for being difficult, and sometimes upstaging others.

Actor Richard Burton remarked that Smith didn’t just take over a scene in The VIPs with him, but said, “She commits grand larceny.”

However, director Peter Hall found Smith wasn’t “remotely difficult unless she’s among idiots. She’s very hard on herself, and I don’t think she sees any reason why she shouldn’t be hard on other people, too.”

Smith conceded that she could be impatient at times.

“It’s true I don’t tolerate fools, but then they don’t tolerate me, so I am spiky,” she said. “Maybe that’s why I’m quite good at playing spiky elderly ladies.”

Margaret Natalie Smith was born in Ilford, on the eastern edge of London, on Dec. 28, 1934. She summed up her life briefly: “One went to school, one wanted to act, one started to act, one’s still acting.”

She took Maggie as her stage name because another Margaret Smith was active in the theatre.

Smith was made a Dame Commander of the British Empire, the equivalent of a knight, in 1990.

Despite her extravagance on stage and before the cameras, Smith was known to be intensely private. She married fellow actor Robert Stephens in 1967. They had two sons and divorced in 1975. The same year she married the writer Beverley Cross, who died in 1998.

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This is a developing story. Please return for updates. 

— with files from The Associated Press 

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