You might remember her best in the nun’s habit as the Reverend Mother admonishing Whoopi Goldberg in Sister Act I and II or in the movie Hook (1991, with Robin Williams).
Her most recent major role as Professor Minerva McGonagall with the incorrigible young wizard Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) has grossed millions.
She has played minor and major roles establishing her as a revered Academy award winning actress on two continents.
Born December 23, 1934, in North London, England, Maggie Smith began her acting while a teenager. Her parents were Nathaniel Smith (pathologist, from Newcastle) and Margaret Hutton Little (from Glasgow) and she has two twin brothers Ian and Alastair.
She attended the Oxford High School for Girls and left there at the age of sixteen to attend the drama school, Oxford Playhouse School. Maggie began as an assistant stage manager and then progressed to the lime light with her first appearance in Oxford Playhouse production of Twelfth Night (1952).
Her first movie appearance was in Child in the House (1956), a brief and un-credited fill in as a party guest in the film. From classical Shakespeare Othello (1966) with Richard Burton, to the uncommon school teacher who’s elicit love affair sparked headlines in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969), which gave her the Best Actress Academy Award.
The sixties for Maggie proved to be tumultuous as she had an affair with the still-married co-actor, Robert Shaffer, who co-starred in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. She had her first child, Christopher (1967) and was married ten days later to Shaffer.
Maggie was a natural with her British background to play in such Shakespeare movies as Much Ado About Nothing (1967), The Merchant of Venice (1972) and Richard III (1995). By 1975 she had divorced Robert Shaffer and married an old boyfriend and playwright, Beverly Cross.
In the 70’s, Maggie found Hollywood with such movies as Neil Simons comedies / spoofs of Murder by Death (1976), Death on the Nile (1978) and California Suite (1978).
By 1982 she appeared in the role Evil Under the Sun, an Agatha Christy murder mystery, with Peter Ustinov. If you’re a fan of fantasy Sci-Fi you might remember the movie Clash of the Titans (1981) where she played Thetis, which was written by her husband Beverly Cross.
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