Great dame The essential Maggie Smith in 10 roles
Othello (1965)
Of her many Shakespearean roles, it is Smith’s quietly defiant Desdemona (luckily for us, committed to film) that is the one to watch.
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
(1969)
Smith captured the essential strangeness of Muriel Spark’s unorthodox teacher, and bagged an Oscar in the process.
Hedda Gabler
(1970)
Her account of Ibsen’s heroine had some critics in raptures. “She haunts the stage like some giant portrait by Modigliani, her alabaster skin stretched tight with hidden anguish,” gushed Milton Shulman.
Private Lives (1975)
Much of Smith’s most enjoyable work lies in the comic work of Noel Coward and Oscar Wilde, where she manages to stay just the right side of camp. Her role here as Amanda was a masterclass in midlife sarcasm and regret.
A Private Function (1984)
A long and successful association with Alan Bennett includes this comedy film, set during the Second World War, with Smith stealing the show as a provincial housewife with slight delusions of grandeur. Just listen to the way she says
“à bientôt”.
Lettice and Lovage (1988)
This Peter Shaffer play about a flamboyant tour guide of an English stately home is rather forgotten now, but Smith’s turn (described by one critic as like that of “a dazzling revue comedienne”) is considered one of her greatest.
Talking Heads
(1988)
Another Bennett collaboration, this television monologue saw Smith star as a dowdy vicar’s wife who begins an affair with the Asian shopkeeper who is perpetuating her alcohol addiction. It’s bleak and, of course, brilliant.
The Lady in the Van
(1999, 2015)
Yes, another Bennett, and probably the one Smith is most famous for. She plays the itinerant Miss Shepherd (a real person who parked in Bennett’s driveway for 15 years). Not always likeable, Smith does however explore both humour and humanity to full effect.
Harry Potter series (2001-2011)
Miss Jean Brodie comes to Hogwarts and, in a franchise filled with starry bijou turns, Smith’s bijou turn as Professor Minerva Mcgonagall is the starriest.
Downton Abbey
(2010-present)
The Dowager Countess reigns supreme in Julian Fellowes’s wildly successful franchise, with Smith clearly relishing the tart dialogue that Fellowes writes for her. into her seventies she teamed up with old friend Judi Dench for David Hare’s A Breath of Life, an evening filled with a sense of elegy and glowing embers. In 2007, the year she was diagnosed with breast cancer, there was Edward Albee’s, The Lady from Dubuque, in which she played the mysterious titular character, a harbinger of death itself.
And that was it. Of course, since then, it’s hardly as if she’s been “away” if you factor in her screen work. She delighted millions as Professor Minerva Mcgonagall in the Harry Potter films. She elevated the tone of Downton Abbey as Lady Violet Crawley with her repertoire of withering looks.
I’ve been lucky enough to see her in action on stage a number of times. By chance she must have been the first major performer I ever saw, as my first trip to the theatre was to see Peter Pan at the London Coliseum in 1973. She has tried to forget the experience. “It was really, really abysmal, and the children were unspeakable,” she told Gyles Brandreth in a recent Q&A. As with her former revue pal, Kenneth Williams, she wasn’t just blessed with funny bones but a way with words, her timing immaculate, her suffer-no-fools attitude a breath of fresh air in an age of default inarticulacy.
Michael Coveney, her biographer, began his book by observing: “She looks at all people, all vanities and all enterprises, with a mocking sense of disquiet and disbelief. Her fear and astonishment at the world, allied to her instinctive technical talent, and her innate intelligence, have made her a great stage actress in both comedy and tragedy, and an international film star.”
So perhaps the key word is “fear”. When there’s monstrousness in one of her performances it’s often a mask hiding that primal emotion. Reviewing her in The Lady in the Van, The Daily Telegraph’s Charles Spencer was rapt, and also chilled: “There are moments when Smith seems to peer deep within, capturing a terrifying sense of anguish and fear.” At her best, Smith signals in her waifs and stray characters that it’s not “she” who is mad, but the ferocious wider world.
A German Life is at the Bridge Theatre from April 12 to May 11; bridgetheatre.com
‘She looks at all people, all vanities and all enterprises, with a mocking sense of disquiet and disbelief ’