Acting Icon Dame Maggie Smith Has Died at 89
The formidable dowager Violet Crawley, Maggie Smith’s scene-stealing character in Downton Abbey, made Smith a bona fide celebrity.
“It’s ridiculous. I led a perfectly normal life until Downton Abbey,” said Smith, who has died at 89. “I’m not kidding. I’d go to theaters. I’d go to galleries. Things like that, on my own, and now I can’t. And that’s—you know—awful. It’s all… It’s truly television. I mean, I’ve been working around for a very long time before Downton Abbey. And life was fine. Nobody knew who the hell I was. Now, it’s all—it has changed.”
Downton Abbey climaxed her unlikely climb to household name that had begun with her appearances in the Harry Potter movies (she was author J. K. Rowling’s choice for the role of Minerva McGonagall). And though fame came late to the two-time Academy Award-winner, it hit like a hammer when it did arrive, exposing her to the bald glare of celebrity and all the nuisances that entails, including one woman who approached her and insisted she parrot one of Violet’s most memorably clueless lines, “What is a weekend?”