It’s been quite good...why mask ‘disguise’ suits Dame Maggie
MAGGIE Smith says she has enjoyed lockdown and wearing a mask – as it stops her being recognised and quizzed about Downton Abbey or Harry Potter.
She said: “I have not been out for a very long time. We are all disguised – face masks – now, so it is quite good.”
Children asked whether she was still in Harry Porter and others wanted to know whether or not Downtown Abbey was coming back.
The 86-year-old actress played Lady Violet Crawley in the ITV series and Professor Minerva McGonagall in the Potter films.
Reminiscing, Dame Maggie also revealed that fellow acting legend Sir Laurence Olivier once knocked her out cold, and how she would never go naked in a show.
She said of Olivier: “He was cross at me on stage. He was furious at me.
“I did not want to do something. I remember him saying ‘Out devil’ and striking me across the face, and I passed, blacked, out.
“He did apologise afterwards, of course he did. I had a black mark on my face from his make-up. Of course it all ended fine.”
And on appearing naked she said: “I would just remain too frozen. I am too stupid and full of work angst. I would not be brave enough.”
Speaking at an event organised by Fane Online with broadcaster Gyles Brandreth and actress Kathleen Turner, Maggie mocked her own longevity in the business.
Referring to the 1969 film The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie – for which she won a best actress Oscar – she said: “I was back at Pinewood Studios recently and when I thought how long ago it was that we did that film I could not believe it.That is horrific.”
Maggie also told how Julie Andrews took her under her wing after spotting her crying in a hotel lift.
Dame Julie, 85, was at the time starring on Broadway in her breakout role of Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady.
Maggie, who was visiting New York in her 20s said she had not anticipated how expensive it would be.
She said: “It was ghastly. First of all I wasn’t really paid very much. And I had been booked into a hotel which, of course, I could not pay for.
“But I was rescued by Julie Andrews. I was going up in the elevator and weeping, which is what I did all the time because I was in such distress about the whole thing.
“They saw that I was weeping and in a terrible state and they asked me to have tea with them, which I did.”