Oscar Profile #19: Maggie Smith

Born in 1934, Maggie Smith has been acting on stage since 1952, on TV since 1955 and on screen since 1958. She is a recipient of five BAFTAs, two Oscars, two Golden Globes, two Emmys and a Tony. She has been a Dame of the British Empire since 1990.

Although she started out as a Shakespearean actress, New York theatergoers first came to know her through the musical farce, New Faces of 1956. Transitioning quickly into films, she won her first BAFTA nomination as Best Newcomer for her film debut in 1958’s Nowhere to Go, losing to Paul Massie in Orders to Kill. It would be the first of her fifteen nominations to date.

Her screen career, though, didn’t really start to kick in until 1963’s The V.I.P.s, which she, along with Margaret Rutherford, stole from reigning box-office stars Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. Outstanding performances in two 1965 films brought her further acclaim, winning her the first of her six Oscar nominations to date for Othello and her second BAFTA nomination for Young Cassidy.

She won both her first Oscar and first BAFTA for 1969’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and additional accolades for that year’s Oh! What a Lovely War. Katharine Hepburn’s loss was her gain when George Cukor chose her to replace Hepburn in 1972’s Travels With My Aunt, for which she was given a third Oscar nomination. Her third BAFTA nomination would have to wait another six years for 1978’s Death on the Nile. At the same time she won her second Oscar for playing an Oscar-losing actress in California Suite. Another BAFTA nomination would come when that film was released in the U.K. the following year.

Her 1980s work was more appreciated in the U.K., than the U.S., where she was awarded three BAFTAs for A Private Function, A Room With a View and The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne. Oscar recognized her only with a nomination for A Room With a View.

Oscar overlooked her completely in the 1990s, but BAFTA nominated her for 1993’s The Secret Garden and awarded her for 1999’s Tea With Mussolini. They also nominated her for her 1999 TV portrayal of Aunt Betsy Trotwood in David Copperfield opposite her future Harry Potter co-star, Daniel Radcliffe, in the title role.

In the first decade of the new millennium she became known to a whole new generation as Professor Minevera McGonagall in the Harry Potter series. She also received her most recent Oscar and BAFTA nominations for 2001’s Gosford Park and her most recent Emmy nomination and win for 2007’s Capturing Mary.

A bout with cancer caused her to slow down somewhat in recent years, but she’s back in full throttle with five major projects in the works for 2011: the British TV series, Downton Abbey; the eighth and final Harry Potter film, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows, Part 2; the animated feature, Gnomeo and Juliet; John Madden’s all-star comedy, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel now filming in India and Quartet, Dustin Hoffman’s directorial debut in which she has her largest screen role in decades, starring opposite Albert Finney and Tom Courtenay.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE (1969), directed by Ronald Neame

From Robert Donat’s Mr. Chips and Martha Scott’s Miss Bishop to Jennifer Jones’ Miss Dove and Sidney Poitier’s Sir, the movies held beloved, self-sacrificing schoolteachers on a very high pedestal. That was before Maggie Smith’s self-deluded, narcissistic fascist Scottish girls’ school prima donna came along. She may believe in art and beauty, but she is a danger to the impressionable twelve-year-olds whose minds she seeks to mold to her own way of thinking. Smith’s character may be hateful, but her performance is brilliant, so sharply nuanced that for a good deal of the film you’re not quite sure whether she’s a heroine or a villainess. By the film’s end, all doubt is swept away, and yet you still feel for her. It’s a gutsy, powerful interpretation, making hers easily one of the most deserving Oscar wins of all time. It’s shocking that she was considered a surprise winner when she’s clearly the stand-out in a year of memorable female performances.

OH! WHAT A LOVELY WAR (1969), directed by Richard Attenborough

Actor Attenborough made his directorial debut with this anti-war musical, which he greatly expanded from Joan Littlewood’s theatrical pastiche. The songs, which parody World War I era favorites, are mostly sung in chorus rather than by the cast which included Dirk Bogarde, John Mills, Laurence Olivier, Ralph Richardson, Vanessa Redgrave and most the working members of the British acting aristocracy. The one notable exception is Maggie Smith playing a sexpot showgirl who lures men into signing up for military induction by singing the forceful “I’ll Make a Man of You”. It was Smith like you’ve never seen her before or since.

A ROOM WITH A VIEW (1986), directed by James Ivory

Ivory’s beautifully realized film of E.M. Forster’s 1908 novel rekindled interest in the filming of literary masterpieces once thought to be too moth bitten to be filmed. Helena Bonham Carter, Julian Sands, Daniel Day-Lewis and Rupert Graves all became stars, Denholm Elliott, Simon Callow and Judi Dench became bigger ones and Maggie Smith had another career milestone as the disapproving chaperon who comes to see the light and sets the young lovers on the road to living happily ever after.

THE LONELY PASSION OF JUDITH HEARNE (1987), directed by Jack Clayton

Brian Moore’s devastating 1955 novel about a lonely Irish spinster was a literary masterpiece. Under Clayton’s astute direction, it became yet another career highlight for the only living actress who could do it justice. Plagued by Catholic guilt, crushed by a life spent under the heel of a domineering aunt and the diminished expectations for the remainder of her life, the struggling piano teacher throws herself at an uninterested Bob Hoskins as her new landlady’s brother with soul-crushing results. Smith has never been better, and that’s saying something.

GOSFORD PARK (2001), directed by Robert Altman

Delving fully into her first major old lady role, Smith plays the kind of sharp-tongued, prissy, but lovable character that would have been played by Edna May Oliver in the thirties or Edith Evans in the sixties. Altman’s comedy-mystery is set in a palatial British estate in 1932 in which the lives of the upstairs family and guests are contrasted with the downstairs help. Once again, even in an all-star cast in which she is but one of many players, Smith is a stand-out, playing a part she could probably do in her sleep.