Oscar-winning British actor Dame Maggie Smith is dead.
She was 89.
Smith was a star of stage and screen for more than seven decades.
She reportedly died in a hospital in London on Friday, her sons announced.
A statement by two of her sons, Chris Larkin and Toby Stephens said: “It is with great sadness we have to announce the death of Dame Maggie Smith. She passed away peacefully in hospital early this morning, Friday 27th September.”
Smith began her stage career as a student, performing at the Oxford Playhouse in 1952, and made her professional debut on Broadway in New Faces of ’56.
During childhood, her parents told Smith the romantic story of how they had met on a train from Glasgow to London via Newcastle.
She moved with her family to Oxford when she was four years old.
Smith was educated at Oxford High School until the age of 16 when she left to study acting at the Oxford Playhouse.
Over the following decades, Smith established herself alongside Judi Dench as one of the most significant British theatre performers, working for the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company.
On Broadway, she received Tony Award nominations for Noël Coward’s Private Lives (1975) and Tom Stoppard’s Night and Day (1979) and won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for Lettice and Lovage (1990).
She won Academy Awards for Best Actress for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969) and Best Supporting Actress for California Suite (1978).
Nation
Leave a Reply