Oscar-winning British actor Maggie Smith, a star of stage and screen for more than seven decades, died in hospital in London on Friday, her sons announced, prompting a flood of tributes.
“It is with great sadness we have to announce the death of Dame Maggie Smith. She passed away peacefully in hospital early this morning,” Chris Larkin and Toby Stephens said in a statement.
Smith — who won a Tony, two Oscars, three Golden Globes and five BAFTAs — achieved late-career international fame for her depiction of the acerbic Dowager Countess of Grantham Violet Crawley in the hit television series Downton Abbey.
Photo: Reuters
The Bafta TV and film academy in a statement said that it was “saddened” to hear of her death, calling her “a legend of British stage and screen.”
It gave her a special award and fellowship to acknowledge her acclaimed career, which British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said had made her a “true national treasure.”
Born in 1934 in Oxford in central England, the daughter of an Oxford professor of pathology, Smith made her stage debut in 1952 with the Oxford University Dramatic Society.
She won a best actress Oscar for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie in 1970 and a best supporting actress award for her depiction of Desdemona in Othello in 1966.
“An intensely private person, she was with friends and family at the end,” her sons, both actors, said.
“She leaves two sons and five loving grandchildren who are devastated by the loss of their extraordinary mother and grandmother,” they said, adding their thanks for all the “kind messages and support” they had received.
Smith famously appeared opposite Laurence Olivier in an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Othello in 1959.
This led to her joining Olivier’s celebrated 1960s British National Theatre company where she earned critical acclaim alongside her husband, the actor Robert Stephens.
Smith’s marriage to heavy-drinking Stephens, with whom she had her two sons, collapsed in 1973 and they divorced two years later.
She remarried shortly after to the screenwriter Beverley Cross, who died in 1998.
In recent decades, some of her best-known films included Gosford Park (2001), The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2012) and The Lady in the Van (2015).
Her work on the wildly popular Downton Abbey and the Harry Potter films also introduced her to a younger generation.
Such was the appeal of Downton Abbey she said in 2017 she could no longer go out without being recognized.
“It’s ridiculous — I led a perfectly normal life until Downton Abbey,” she told the British Film Institute.
“I would go to theaters, I would go to galleries and things like that on my own. And now I can’t,” she said.
Smith was made a Dame of the British Empire in 1990 by Queen Elizabeth II.
Former Nicaraguan president Violeta Chamorro, who brought peace to Nicaragua after years of war and was the first woman elected president in the Americas, died on Saturday at the age of 95, her family said. Chamorro, who ruled the poor Central American country from 1990 to 1997, “died in peace, surrounded by the affection and love of her children,” said a statement issued by her four children. As president, Chamorro ended a civil war that had raged for much of the 1980s as US-backed rebels known as the “Contras” fought the leftist Sandinista government. That conflict made Nicaragua one of
BOMBARDMENT: Moscow sent more than 440 drones and 32 missiles, Volodymyr Zelenskiy said, in ‘one of the most terrifying strikes’ on the capital in recent months A nighttime Russian missile and drone bombardment of Ukraine killed at least 15 people and injured 116 while they slept in their homes, local officials said yesterday, with the main barrage centering on the capital, Kyiv. Kyiv City Military Administration head Tymur Tkachenko said 14 people were killed and 99 were injured as explosions echoed across the city for hours during the night. The bombardment demolished a nine-story residential building, destroying dozens of apartments. Emergency workers were at the scene to rescue people from under the rubble. Russia flung more than 440 drones and 32 missiles at Ukraine, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy
COMPETITION: The US and Russia make up about 90 percent of the world stockpile and are adding new versions, while China’s nuclear force is steadily rising, SIPRI said Most of the world’s nuclear-armed states continued to modernize their arsenals last year, setting the stage for a new nuclear arms race, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said yesterday. Nuclear powers including the US and Russia — which account for about 90 percent of the world’s stockpile — had spent time last year “upgrading existing weapons and adding newer versions,” researchers said. Since the end of the Cold War, old warheads have generally been dismantled quicker than new ones have been deployed, resulting in a decrease in the overall number of warheads. However, SIPRI said that the trend was likely
‘SHORTSIGHTED’: Using aid as leverage is punitive, would not be regarded well among Pacific Island nations and would further open the door for China, an academic said New Zealand has suspended millions of dollars in budget funding to the Cook Islands, it said yesterday, as the relationship between the two constitutionally linked countries continues to deteriorate amid the island group’s deepening ties with China. A spokesperson for New Zealand Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters said in a statement that New Zealand early this month decided to suspend payment of NZ$18.2 million (US$11 million) in core sector support funding for this year and next year as it “relies on a high trust bilateral relationship.” New Zealand and Australia have become increasingly cautious about China’s growing presence in the Pacific
RSS