Maggie Smith is widely regarded as one of the best actors to ever come out of England. The Essex-born actress has been performing for the past seven decades, and she is best recognised for her appearances in such classic shows as Downton Abbey and the Harry Potter film franchise. To that end, does anyone know where Maggie Smith is right now? How is her health? Find out how much money Maggie Smith has made and learn more about her impressive career here.
Can You Confirm if Maggie Smith Is Alive or Not?
Back in January of 1988, Maggie Smith was given the news that she had Graves’ illness. Toxic diffuse goitre is a condition that causes hyperthyroidism by damaging the thyroid gland. She experienced the signs of the sickness and ultimately underwent radiotherapy and eye surgery.
After being diagnosed with breast cancer in 2007, the Sunday Telegraph claimed that Maggie Smith had achieved a full recovery by 2009. She has not passed away and is very much present and functioning now.
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The Year of Maggie Smith’s Birth Is 1934
Maggie Smith was born on December 28, 1934, in Ilford, Essex. The star of Downton Abbey, who is now 87 (and doing OK), had aspired to be an actor since she was a teenager. She wanted to be an actress, but her pathologist father and secretary mother weren’t very supportive of the idea.
Truthfully, “I have no idea where the drive [to act] came from,” Smith told the Evening Standard in 2019. We didn’t go to the movies since it was such a horrible era. The neighbours took me to the movies on a Sunday once, and I got into a lot of trouble for it.
It’s Been 70 Years Since Maggie Smith First Entered the Spotlight.
Smith dropped out of high school at 16 to take acting classes at the prestigious Oxford Playhouse, much to her parent’s chagrin. The young actress made her stage debut in a rendition of Twelfth Night at the Oxford Playhouse when she was just 17 years old, in 1952.
She persisted in her stage career and was eventually asked to join Lawrence Oliver’s National Theatre Company. Through the 1960s, she was a regular performer with the troupe at the Royal National Theatre. In the 1980s and 1990s, Smith established herself as a seasoned performer on both the London and New York City stages, earning a number of prominent theatre honours and a Tony for her performance in the 1990 Broadway production of Lettice and Lovage.
Beginning in the late ’50s, Smith also enjoyed great success in the film industry. Nowhere to Go, a 1958 crime picture, was her first film role and garnered her a nomination for a British Academy Film Award. She remained a renowned cinema star for the next decade, earning her first Best Actress Oscar for her performance in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie in 1969.
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She has been nominated for an Academy Award a total of six times, and she won for her role in the comedy California Suite in 1978. Smith is a multi-award winner, having taken home trophies from the British Academy Film Awards (five), the Golden Globes (three), and the Screen Actors Guild (five) (SAG). A Room with a View, Hook, Sister Act and Sister Act 2, The First Wives Club, Gosford Park, and the Harry Potter series are just a few of her most famous films from the previous four decades.
Smith’s excellent acting career included roles on television, albeit somewhat later in her life. She received her first Emmy Award nomination for her role in the 1993 PBS TV film Suddenly, Last Summer and her first BAFTA TV Award for Best Actress for 1983’s All Is Love. She went on to star in several more famous TV productions, including a 1999 BBC rendition of David Copperfield, a 2003 HBO film, My House in Umbria, and a 2007 HBO series, Capturing Mary.
Her breakthrough role as Violet Crawley in the smash hit British historical drama Downton Abbey came in 2010. Smith says working on the show was a blast and that she enjoyed every minute of playing the Crawley family matriarch.
Smith remarked of her on-screen persona, “I thought it was tremendous fun because she was so—well, obviously the oldest in the bunch,” in a 2016 interview on the NPR programme Fresh Air. And that was great because she could just say what she wanted to say as the elder and everyone else would listen to her.
That was great, by the way. I appreciate your kind words regarding the cast as a whole, and I can assure you they were well deserved: the company was honoured with three SAG awards for outstanding ensemble performance.
Smith is one of a select group of actors to have won the Academy Award, the Emmy Award, and the Tony Award for her work in film, television, and theatre, respectively. The likes of Ingrid Bergman, Rita Moreno, Al Pacino, Helen Mirren, and Frances McDormand are also triple-crowners.
