Maggie Smith once told me off for standing on her mark, so I decided to dedicate today’s column to her and her amazing career.
Dame Margaret Natalie Smith, DBE, is 76 years old, born on 28th December 1934 in Ilford, Essex. Did you know Maggie Smith was an Essex girl? She is the daughter of a Glasgow-born secretary and a public health pathologist from Newcastle. According to Wikipedia she has been ‘active’ since 1952, that is quite a career. 59 years to be exact. She has won a BAFTA, two Academy Awards (Oscars), two Golden Globes, an Emmy, a Laurence Olivier Award, two SAG awards and a Tony.
She has been married twice, once to Robert Stephens, and once to Beverly Cross until his death in 1998, and has two children. One of those is the famous actor Toby Stephens.
Smith has reached an entire new audience through runaway hit TV series Downtown Abbey, she began her career at the Oxford Playhouse and made her first film in 1956. She performed at the Royal National Theatre a lot in the 1960s and played Desdemona in Othello opposite Laurence Olivier.
She has appeared in numerous productions at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Ontario from 1976 until 1980. In 2007 she appeared at the Theatre Royal Haymarket in Edward Albee’s The Lady from Dubuque. Smith has confessed that she suffers from terrible stage fright, even throwing up before performances.
It was reported in the Sunday Telegraph’s Mandrake diary that she was diagnosed with breast cancer, but went on to make a full recovery. Long may she live.
