Dame Maggie Smith: Actress with 'astonishing capacity to switch from graciousness to mischief'

But although Maggie was a tour de force in leading roles across film, theatre and TV, she was equally happy – even during the peak of her stardom – to accept supporting roles, particularly in films.

Truly professional and as near a perfectionist as she could be, she treated these roles with as much detailed and careful attention as she did her major parts.

Probably her greatest triumph was in The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie, for which she won her first Oscar.

Yet Maggie – she was made a Dame in 1990 – was self-deprecating about her abilities. Her family background gave no indication that she would not only enter the acting profession but also become one of its leading exponents.

She said she had wanted, from childhood, to become an actress, but she did not see a play or a film until she was a teenager.

Nor did she receive much encouragement from her family, particularly one of her grandmothers, who remarked that she could not go into acting “with a face like that”. But none of this deterred her from her ambition.

Margaret Natalie Smith was born in Ilford, Essex, on December 28, 1934. She was educated at Oxford High School for Girls and later the Oxford Playhouse School, and first appeared on the stage as a girl of 18 in Twelfth Night.

She made an early mark in revues, as a singer and dancer. One fan who saw her on Broadway in New Faces of ’56, said he laughed so much he ended up banging his head on the seat in front of him.

She was spotted by Laurence Olivier, who saw her as much more than just a vaudeville performer and invited her to join the newly-formed Royal National Theatre Company in London.

There, and at the Old Vic, she excelled in both tragedy and comedy, moving easily from Shakespeare to Noel Coward, to Restoration comedy to Ibsen.

As a repertory actress, she was able to develop her incredible range, skill and talent among some of Britain’s best actors, including Robert Stephens, who was to become her first husband. They married in 1967 but divorced in 1974.

The film industry began to recognise her abilities and she was given several supporting roles. But she first emerged as an international star with her virtuoso performance as the fanatical teacher Jean Brodie in The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie, for which she won a best actress Oscar.

Other film roles include her portrayal of a drunken Oscar loser (opposite Michael Caine) in California Suite, the dying older lover in Love, Pain And The Whole Damn Thing, the tragic lodger in The Lonely Passion Of Judith Hearne, and the so-called “funny old bat” in Gosford Park, which brought her a sixth Oscar nomination.

Even in smaller roles she could upstage the film “giants”. In one film, Richard Burton described her scene-stealing as “grand larceny”.

Dame Maggie won over a whole new generation of fans when she played Professor McGonagall in the Harry Potter films. And in 2010 she was central to the success of ITV series Downton Abbey, in her Emmy-award winning role as the acerbic Violet Crawley, Dowager Countess of Grantham.

She later said: “I am deeply grateful for the work in (Harry) Potter and indeed Downton (Abbey) but it wasn’t what you’d call satisfying. I didn’t really feel I was acting in those things.”

Her numerous awards also covered her performances in Tea With Mussolini and James Ivory and Ismail Merchant’s adaptation of A Room With A View (co-starring Simon Callow and Judi Dench) as well as A Private Function and The Lonely Passion Of Judith Hearne, opposite Bob Hoskins and Wendy Hiller, She starred again alongside Dench in the 2004 film Ladies In Lavender, and on stage in the David Hare play The Breath Of Life.

She recently appeared in the 2022 production Downton Abbey: A New Era, in which Violet’s health deteriorates and she dies in an emotional end to her character.

Dame Maggie’s second husband, the playwright Beverley Cross whom she married in 1975, died in 1998. She had two sons from her first marriage, Toby Stephens and Chris Larkin, who are both actors.